


Rhapsody in Blue

by Mhalachai



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: A spy's life, F/F, F/M, Girls rule the world, Other, Violence, canon character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2017-12-07 16:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 55,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For decades, Peggy Carter has had only two constants in her life: Howard Stark, and the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This story is canon-divergent from both CA:TWS and the Agent Carter television show. The origins of the Winter Soldier character in this story are more in line with the comics' interpretation.
> 
> Also because if Peggy Carter was still a part of SHIELD, none of this HYDRA mess would have happened.

* * *

You should know something going in: This is not a love story.

* * *

It started in London in 1940. Peggy Carter was a specialist with the new SSR division and Howard Stark was a brash American who looked like a movie star and acted like some big shot, all flash and zazz.

His presentation to the military brass made her roll her eyes; his demonstration of the new weaponry to be used against the Nazis made her chest hurt for the possibilities, her hands ache to hold one of her very own.

She'd sought Stark out after the presentation, half-expecting him to brush her off as some dizzy dame (wasn't that they called useless women in America?), but he'd just sized her up with a glance, loaded the chamber with the over-large bullets, and placed the gun in her hands.

The kickback nearly put her on her back, but she hit the target clean, blowing a hole in the sand wall nearly the size of a dinner plate.

The sheer exhilaration pulled a laugh from her throat, at the possibility of pure destruction, and she saw Howard grinning at her like he knew exactly what she felt.

* * *

All things considered, it wasn't surprising they ended up in bed. The War had changed things in the social order. It wasn't the first time Peggy had taken a man to her bed, knowing she'd never see him again, and it wouldn't be the last. But she knew from the first moment she'd spoken to him that Howard was the same sort of person, and neither of them minded.

He was, however, one of the most considerate lovers she'd ever had.

The next morning, he was on his way out of London and she was back at work as if it had never happened.

Only he didn't disappear out of her life after all.

One year later in New York, Peggy faced Howard Stark across the table as Professor Erskine described his mad Super Soldier scheme. And of _course_ Howard Stark was the only man who could build the equipment Erskine needed.

Peggy stayed behind when the rest of the military men departed, leaving Erskine and Howard to discuss plans and blueprints and materials. She didn't understand how this plan could possibly work, but she stayed and she listened, she got them coffee when they started to flag, and she very tactfully didn't point out how insane this all sounded.

She'd lived through the dreadful toll the Nazis were wreaking across Europe. Any plan, no matter how insane, was better than nothing.

New York wasn't like London; Peggy couldn't exactly bring a man back to her room in the boarding house, but if she and Howard grabbed a few minutes in the back room here and there, that was nobody's business but theirs.

She suspected that Erskine knew, but he never said anything.

Eventually, Howard was pulled back into his company, working to prepare for the upcoming Expo (on a flying car of all things; Howard was never happy unless he was flying) and Peggy was transferred into the subject preparation portion of the Super Soldier experiment.

She didn't see Howard for a long time, and she was fine with that. Sure, he was pleasant on the eyes and rather creative in bed. But he was only a distraction to her, as she was to him. It was just the way things were.

So Peggy went off to Camp Lehigh and got on with the mission.

And that's where Peggy met Steve Rogers.

* * *

Steve was a puzzle Peggy couldn't decipher. The majority of men were embarrassingly easy to read; Steve kept surprising her. Most short men were abrasive and aggressive as if that could make up for their height; Steve was unfailingly polite yet firm, never giving up or giving in. It took Peggy a long time to realize that Steve was always challenging himself and everyone around him to a higher standard, and that he meant it when he said he hated bullies.

She knew what Erskine saw in Steve, because she saw it too.

She just never expected the Super Soldier experiment to work.

That day was the first time she'd seen Howard in months and it barely registered. Not that it mattered; he was so intent on his machines that she doubted he even knew she was in the room.

Steve got into the machine.

Howard turned the dial.

The screaming began.

They opened the machine and Steve Rogers stepped out a changed man.

Peggy and Howard exchanged an incredulous look, because _honestly,_ but then the HYDRA infiltrator shot Erskine and everything went crazy.

* * *

They sent Peggy back to Europe. She kept up on Steve's activities through the papers that made their way slowly down the line. But in reality, HYDRA was a more pressing problem. It was war, one that Peggy feared they were going to lose.

Howard drifted in and out of her life, making weapons and armor for the SSR to use, but it wasn't enough. Everyone knew it.

Then Steve Rogers made his way to Europe headlining a bloody USO show, found out his best friend was missing in action, and somehow managed to convince Howard to fly him behind enemy lines on an impossible rescue mission.

It was exactly the sort of insanity Howard relished and Peggy found herself along for the ride, her heart in her throat as Steve got ready, as Howard threw out remark after remark until Steve caught something, realized that the familiar camaraderie between Howard and Peggy wasn't quite so innocent after all, but then he smiled at her and flung himself out of the airplane behind enemy lines.

Peggy was going to _kill_ Howard.

* * *

Impossibly, Steve made it back, bringing the wounded soldiers with him.

Now, they had HYDRA weapons. Howard took them apart, rebuilt them from the ground up, giving the Allies a fighting chance.

Steve Rogers gave them all something to fight for.

And Peggy fell in love.

She hadn't want to, but her infatuation with Steve Rogers grew and snaked its way into her heart and it wasn't fair.

She should have known it would end the way it did.

Steve stopped the weapons headed for America, killed Schmidt, and managed one last radio call to tell them the Tesseract had fallen into the ocean, that he couldn't stop the plane and was going to crash it into the water.

Peggy got to say goodbye to the man she loved. It was more than most women got.

* * *

The War grew worse, both in Europe and in the Pacific. Howard went back to America, a quick squeeze on her shoulder and a whisper to say he was working on something called the Manhattan Project to harness atomic energy.

HYDRA might be momentarily headless, but Hitler was still in ascendance and the final push began.

It was war. Peggy saw things, _did_ things, that made her question everything she thought she believed in. She tried not to think too much about what they had to do, what she had to do, to win the war against the Nazis and the Axis.

Somehow, the Allies pushed through to victory in Europe.

The Americans dropped two atomic bombs in Japan.

The newspapers said they'd won.

* * *

Peggy left England in December of 1945, having been permanently assigned to SSR's successor, SHIELD, in America. She moved into a tiny flat by herself, lived with rationing, pretended she was just like everyone else trying to put their lives back together after years of war.

Howard showed up on her doorstep in March of the following year and stayed for a week. He didn't talk much. That was just fine with Peggy. She didn't feel like listening.

They were lying in bed one night, Howard's head on her stomach, drawing circles on her skin with the tips of his fingers. She had her hand in his hair, wishing that life could be this simple, that she could just marry Howard, not because she loved him, but because she could stop _thinking_ and be done.

"D'you know what I think sometimes?" Howard asked into the quiet air.

"What?"

"I think Steve was the lucky one."

His voice didn't crack, didn't waver, but Peggy could hear the pain lurking under his words.

She took his hand in hers, kissed his fingers one by one. "Me too."

The dead had their escape from war. The living never did.

* * *

She didn't see Howard for years, but there was much for a young woman with her background to do with SHIELD. She spent years gathering intelligence, in Europe and America and Asia. The war was over, but that just meant things had become so much more dangerous.

They called it a cold war, and that was what it felt like – a never-ending walk through the coldest of winters.

Rumors began to creep into SHIELD's hearing of the Soviets' ultimate weapon, a Winter Soldier, the man they would send in when everyone else failed. But the rumors were less substantial than a spider's web; no photographs or evidence surfaced. All they had were empty spaces where human beings used to be.

Peggy supposed she would have kept up the life of espionage until she died a bloody death at the hands of the enemy, but for one thing:

In 1949, Howard Stark pulled the Tesseract out of the ocean.

* * *

By now, Peggy had enough experience with SHIELD to know how to get things done – she simply walked into the SHIELD lab where Howard was working on the Tesseract and didn't leave.

They needed a project supervisor with Level Seven security clearance and the ability to never take ‘no' for an answer. The head of SHIELD was happy enough when he realized he had someone who could handle Howard Stark. Peggy suspected the man knew about the affair between her and Howard and planned to use it to his advantage one day.

Fine. Peggy had enough information about the man's sexual proclivities towards a certain class of prostitute to destroy him politically if it ever came to that.

Howard didn't care about any of it. All that mattered to him was the Tesseract, learning how it worked, what he could make it do.

He had a team of five, all good and brilliant men, and they worked together night and day on the Tesseract for three months before everything went terribly wrong.

* * *

Dr. Stoddard and Dr. Bane were in the shielded experiment room, door wide open, with the Tesseract on the table outside of its protective casing. Howard and Dr. Sloan were together with Dr. Templeton in the outer room, arguing about electricity and output. Peggy stood in the doorway to the Tesseract shield room, finishing her daily equipment audit, preparing for the hourly power analysis and wishing desperately for a cup of tea, when the room flashed bright blue and the screaming began.

She dropped her clipboard, looking into the shielded room just in time to see the Tesseract throw off blue loops of energy. One of loops hit Dr. Bane in the chest, and the man dissolved into ash.

Dr. Stoddard fell to the ground, unconscious or worse, and the Tesseract kept flashing.

Peggy didn't think, she just reacted. "Close the door!" she shouted at Howard, ten steps behind her. She ran for the Tesseract, remembering that it had killed Schmidt in the war, had just killed at least one of her colleague, could kill so many others if she didn't stop it.

The shield room door slamming was the loudest thing she had ever heard.

She knew the Tesseract would kill her, and she didn't care. If this was to be her death, at least let her actions save the lives of others.

This must have been how Steve felt, at the end.

Peggy's hand closed on the Tesseract, its cool edges sharp against her skin. She picked it up, waves of blue energy pulsing over and through her body like quicksilver.

She put the Tesseract back into its protective container. With one final pulse, the cube subsided, and went quiet.

She closed the lid and only then did she let herself collapse in the horrible stillness.

* * *

Her heart beat irregularly in her chest, pounding out a deep staccato; her ears roared with the silence. Peggy ignored the empty words the doctors mouthed at her, the empty touch of their hands on her as they guided her into the infirmary.

Halfway across the floor, the whispers began.

Snatches at first, half-heard words on a quicksilver breeze, darting around just out of reach.

The incomprehensible whispers drowned out all other noise in Peggy's head, louder and louder, until all she could do was curl up under the blanket and scream at the voices to _stop, just stop_ , until her throat was raw, until the doctors held her down, until they injected something into her arm that both burned and froze as it spread through her veins, dragging her into unconsciousness.

The whispers followed her down.

When she woke, the whispers had retreated and she could hear once more.

She didn't care. She didn't feel anything. Not grief at Dr. Bane's death, not fear that she might soon follow suit.

All she felt was hollow.

Eventually, she realized Howard was in the room with her. He sat on a chair at her side, and she didn't know how long he had been there.

"What happens now?" Peggy asked after a very long time, throat raw.

Carefully, Howard took her hand. His touch was almost too hot. "We wait. Something else might.... they're not sure what might else happen to you."

Peggy swallowed. "What about you? You were exposed too."

"Not as much as you were." Howard's grip on her hand tightened. "Peggy... I had to close that door."

She blinked at him, feeling a faint echo of surprise from somewhere deep in her head. "Of course you did."

"Some of the agents think I should have pushed you out of the way and gone in after the Tesseract myself."

Peggy stared at him. "I was closer than you were. We'd have lost seconds, people could have died, we had no way of knowing what a delay might have done."

"I know."

And in his expression, she saw that he did; he'd had the option to do the noble thing to save her and risk millions of lives. But he had chosen not to.

That was the man he'd become.

Peggy squeezed Howard's hand. "If you ever do something as stupid as that," she said, "I will personally bring you back from the dead and kill you all over again."

Howard barked out a laugh, short and shocked and not much better than crying.

Sometimes, Peggy thought it was good that Howard had her around, because she was certain that no one else understood the _practicality_ of this man.

* * *

Dr. Stoddard woke up after a week and didn't say anything. Three days later, they found him on the floor of the infirmary; he'd sliced through the artery in his wrist and bled out in under five minutes.

The Tesseract remained dormant. No one knew what had happened. They likely never would.

* * *

SHIELD shelved the Tesseract project.

Howard went back to Stark Industries, began to build weapons to support America and their allies in the Cold War.

Peggy returned to her life of espionage.

Years passed.

* * *

She didn't get any older.


	2. Chapter 2

During one of her layovers in New York in the early sixties, Howard asked Peggy to marry him.

"No."

"Why not?"

They were in bed again, in Howard's flat in the city's most expensive high-rise. Peggy was a mess and she was certain she wouldn't be able to walk any time soon, her only consolation being that Howard looked as wrecked as she felt.

With a sigh, Peggy sat up and straddled Howard's hips, noting with satisfaction how he winced when she brushed up against sensitive body parts. "Because I don't love you and you don't love me."

"You say that like it matters," he protested, hands around her waist to keep her still.

"Doesn't it?" she asked.

"You told me that you'd never love anyone."

She stared down at him, noticing for the first time the hints of grey in his hair, the lines at the corners of his eyes. "That doesn't mean you never will."

She leaned down to kiss him, his tongue soft against hers, shutting him up before he could ask her again.

* * *

Peggy spent most of 1964 locked in a battle of wits and wills (and, eventually, knives) with a young Soviet agent code-named the Black Widow, a redheaded slip of a girl with a talent for languages and seduction.

After a year, Peggy walked away victorious, but she feared that the length of the operation had only sharpened her enemy's skills.

Privately, she wondered if she could have convinced the woman to turn against the Soviets, but, no, it wouldn't have worked. The girl was still so young and held the idealism of the young about who the good guys were.

Peggy had been in the world long enough to know that there was no absolute line between good and evil; just bad and worse.

No one talked about the Winter Soldier anymore. They didn't need to; fear of him was weapon enough.

* * *

As dubious reward, Peggy's next assignment for SHIELD was teaching undercover on an American college campus to look for new recruits. The college world was rather different than what Peggy expected – Beatniks and hippies or whatever the kids were calling themselves these days. They were too young to remember the War, yet they thought they knew everything.

Peggy supposed every generation thought that. It was nice to have some new blood in the counterculture, pushing back against the establishment.

Also, she rather enjoyed the music.

It was there, late in 1966,  that Peggy found Howard a wife.

It wasn't exactly  like that; Maria Carbonell Collins was in one of Peggy's modern history classes, a dark-haired beautiful young woman  with a quick wit and saber-sharp intelligence. She clashed with Peggy on politics and policy, flourished in every assignment, came back wanting more.

Peggy would have recommended Maria to SHIELD but for the girl's soft heart – Maria  would never be able to kill someone in the line of duty.

It was refreshing, in Peggy's line of work, to see someone who wasn't jaded about life.

The semester was coming to a close and Peggy was marking papers, cursing the illiteracy of the modern generation, when her office door opened and Howard Stark swept inside.

"Come to dinner with me," he demanded.

Peggy continued with her marking. "Sorry, darling, I have work to do."

"Shelve it. I have reservations at an expensive restaurant and need a beautiful woman to hang on my arm and laugh at my jokes."

"If you can pay for dinner, you can pay for a date. Or take Obadiah."

Howard made a face. "Obadiah never laughs at my jokes, and you should see what I'm paying him."

A tap at the opened door, and Peggy looked up to see Maria standing in the hallway, books clutched to her chest and her eyes wide. "I can come back," Maria offered.

Peggy glanced at Howard, ready to smirk at him about his timing, but he was staring at the girl  with an expression that Peggy didn't recognize.

"Come in," Peggy said, leaning back in her chair. This was interesting.

Maria edged into the room, sitting on the edge of the worn sofa and balancing her books on the cushions. Like all the girls in her year, she was wearing a skirt inches above her knees, showing a length of slender leg.

"I wanted to talk to you about Friday's assignment," Maria said, addressing Peggy, although most of her attention was on Howard.

Peggy was about to tell Maria to come again tomorrow, that she was busy, but as she opened her mouth, a blue-silver breeze held Peggy's tongue. A shiver of sound filled the room, a whisper that only Peggy could hear, not words, just a feeling.

A warning.

Peggy took another look at how the girl was staring at Howard, and how Howard was looking at Maria, and somehow knew where this would lead.

Peggy swallowed her planned words and changed direction. "I'm sorry, Maria, I'm not going to be able to stay, I have plans." She stood up. "Let me introduce you to my friend, Howard. He's looking for someone to take to dinner."

Howard stood up as well, holding out his hand to Maria, smiling a mega-watt smile. The man might have been over fifty, but he still knew how to captivate a young woman.

"I'm Maria," the girl said, holding out her hand to shake. "It's nice to meet you."

"You as well," Howard said, bowing over her hand. "So, are you in?"

Maria frowned. "In what?"

"For dinner. Eight o'clock, Declaires. I'll pick you up at seven thirty?"

Startled, Maria looked over Howard's shoulder to Peggy, who shrugged. "I hear they have an amazing dessert menu," Peggy said.

Maria looked back at Howard, cheeks flushed. "I'd be delighted to join you for dinner." She pulled  a slip of paper out of her notebook, wrote an address on the back, and handed it to Howard. She managed to scoop up her books and bag without incident, and gave Howard a charming smile. "I'll see you at seven-thirty, Howard."

Howard held the door for Maria, looking after her as she walked down the hall. "What the hell just happened?" he asked Peggy after a minute.

"You invited a girl half your age out for dinner," Peggy said. "And if you take advantage, I _will_ make you regret it."

"Why did I just do that?" he asked her, sounding puzzled.

Peggy dropped her stack of papers into her bag and rounded the desk. "For the same reason you're going to end this date by asking Maria for another," she said, kissing Howard on the mouth. "Because you're not getting any younger, and she's far too good for you."

The phone rang at three in the morning, waking Peggy from fitful dreams. She fumbled up the receiver to hear Howard's panicked voice demanding, "How much do you know about Maria?"

"Why?" Peggy demanded, turning on a lamp. She envisioned a million disasters – an assassination attempt, a disastrous discussion on politics, a scene in a restaurant. Howard so hated scenes unless he was the one causing them.

"Because I asked her to marry me."

Peggy waited for him to say he was kidding, but nothing more came over the line. She rubbed her eyes with her palm. "Oh Howard, _honestly_..."

"Is she a spy?" he asked, almost hopefully. "Or a communist. Tell me she's already married."

Peggy flopped back onto the bed. "She's not a spy, or a communist, and she's not married. Did she say yes?"

Howard sighed. "Yes. We ended up at a bar and we talked all night and I drove her home and I asked her to marry me and she said yes."

"Did you sleep with her?" Peggy asked.

"No."

This caused Peggy to raise her eyebrows. "Who are you, and what have you done with Howard Stark?"

"This isn't funny, Peggs!"

"Relax, Howard," Peggy told him. "You can change your mind in the morning. Hell, Maria might change her mind in the morning."

"I don't want her to change her mind," Howard said, his voice a tad petulant. "I don't understand."

Peggy wondered if she should feel jealous, or angry, but all she wanted to do was hang up the phone and laugh. "You fool," she said. "It's love at first sight."

"I'm too old for this! This is all your fault!"

"Well, then," Peggy said, stretching out under the covers. "You're welcome. Now go to sleep and see if anything happens in the morning."

Morning came and went. Maria didn't change her mind and neither did Howard.

Howard and Maria married six months later, in a spring wedding ceremony that was the scandal of New York for about twenty minutes. Peggy was there and spent most of the time catching up with Howard's old war buddies, avoiding Maria's friends, and drinking far more bourbon than was good for her.

At least one of them would have a happy ending.

* * *

Maybe it was the generation in which Maria grew up, but in the middle of September while Peggy was walking with Maria through Central Park, the younger woman said, "You and Howard, are you still sleeping together?"

Peggy raised an eyebrow at Maria's tone. "He's married," Peggy reminded her. "To you."

"That wasn't a no."

"No, Maria, I am not sleeping with your husband." She put her arm through Maria's, pulling the young woman along the path.

"Do you want to?" Maria asked. "I know you used to be involved, Howard told me."

Peggy came to a halt, staring at Maria. This wasn't a  conversation she'd been expecting to have on this cool fall day. Or on any day. "What are you asking me?"

Maria bit her lip, her main nervous twitch, but her eyes were set on Peggy's face. "I thought that, maybe, we could... It wouldn't be like it used to be, but I think that the three of us could make it work."

Peggy took in a breath and let it out her nose. "Are you asking me to have a threesome with you and your husband?"

A passing priest looked at them, scandalized, then hurried on. Peggy ignored him.

"I think it's called a ménage a trois," Maria said, mangling the pronunciation but getting the words out.

"I know what it's called," Peggy said. "Did Howard put you up to this?"

"No, not at all," Maria said hastily. "He said you wouldn't go for it. But he's game if you are."

"I'll just bet he is," Peggy murmured. She found she was actually considering the offer. She'd had other lovers in her life, but Howard had certainly been the most... intense.

Besides, she could tell from Maria's expression that Howard really didn't believe that Peggy would be interested.

Well, she did like to surprise him. "Fine," Peggy said. Maria couldn't help herself from grinning. "On one condition."

"Anything," Maria said.

Peggy smiled. "I get to be there when you tell Howard what he's in for."

A girl had to have a little fun, after all. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some angst, some babies, and some truly A+ parenting. We get to meet young Tony Stark in this one.

So it turned out that Maria wasn't inviting Peggy into Howard's bed just for _Howard's_ benefit.

Peggy didn't mind in the least. She'd always been flexible like that – it was what had gotten her into that mess with the Black Widow, after all.

The rather loose arrangement went on for over two years, whenever Peggy was in town from her various assignments. In fact, things were going along swimmingly until Peggy realized that she wasn't feeling poorly from the stress of the job; that this whole debacle had landed on its inevitable conclusion.

"What do you mean, you're pregnant?"

Peggy sighed, letting her head tip back onto the chair's headrest in Howard's office at Stark Industries. "I was unaware that statement had any ambiguity."

Howard cursed. "It's mine?"

"Yes, you idiot."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Absolutely nothing." Peggy got to her feet and rounded the desk to drop a kiss on Howard's head. "I thought you should know."

"What will you do now?" Howard's voice followed her as she moved to leave.

Peggy paused in the doorway, looking back at him, a king alone in his lonely court "Maybe I'll retire, let the youngsters have their chance."

Howard dropped his head into his hands.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone it's yours."

"Do you really think that would do my reputation any damage?" he asked without looking up.

Peggy rolled her eyes. "Goodbye, Howard."

In spite of everything, it didn't seem all that final.

* * *

Maria was _thrilled_.

* * *

Being pregnant was strange, physically, and Peggy was faintly worried that her long-ago exposure to the Tesseract would cause something to go wrong, but things went along just fine and after the usual amount of time, Peggy gave birth to a baby girl.

The child was rather beautiful, if a mother could be excused a biased opinion. She had strong hints of her father's features, wide eyes and a curving mouth, with hair and eyes as dark as Peggy's.

Maria was the first person to visit Peggy when she brought the baby home, squealing over the infant and caring for her whenever Peggy needed a break. She practically moved in to Peggy's flat for weeks on end.

Howard stopped by. Once. By then, Peggy had already named the girl Sarah.

Because Howard Stark had a competitive streak in him a mile long, Peggy wasn't at all surprised when Maria started showing signs of morning sickness. It was a good thing, Maria reassured Peggy. Maria had always wanted kids and Howard, well, Howard was just stressed out about work.

* * *

Sarah was five months old when SHIELD clawed its way back into Peggy's life.

It never occurred to Peggy to leave Sarah with Howard. She dropped the baby off at her brother's house, leaving Sarah in her sister-in-law's capable hands. They had a boy of their own, a few years older than Sarah, and they would take good care of her.

Joshua was ten years younger than Peggy and had been living in America since the end of the War. He'd keep Sarah safe.

It took a long time, too long, for Peggy and her band of misfit associates to stop HYDRA from rearing its head again and crushing Eastern Europe. Seasons passed, they lost far too many good men, but they stopped HYDRA.

When Peggy got home, it was to news that Maria had had a little boy named Anthony, and Peggy's daughter looked at her like she was a stranger.

* * *

Peggy and her brother sat down and had a talk about what was best for Sarah, how it was no trouble for them to keep the girl, it would only be confusing and upsetting for Sarah when Peggy had to leave again for SHIELD business, and Peggy had to excuse herself from the conversation once to keep from throwing up.

She hadn't thought that the one thing she would lose in all this was her _daughter_.

But as much as it tore at Peggy's heart, her brother was right. Sarah didn't know Peggy anymore, wouldn't understand being taken from the only home she'd known for over two years.

Peggy already had orders for her next assignment, so she swallowed the pain, sat talking with her brother and his wife over dinner while Sarah stared at her mother with wide brown eyes, silent and contemplative.

Peggy stayed with her brother for a week, watching her daughter and her nephew play, hoping that if the next mission was the one she didn't come back from, Sarah might somehow remember some fragment of her mother.

Joseph gave Peggy a photograph of Sarah to take with her. Peggy stopped at the closest post office and mailed the photo to Howard.

Three days later, she was in Geneva.

* * *

The bullet wounds were slow to heal, and her strength even slower to return. When Peggy was back on her feet, SHIELD shipped her to America with a firm warning that she was on leave until further notice.

Peggy knew the way the winds were blowing. They'd be back for her in no time.

She went to San Diego to see Sarah. By now, the girl was old enough to understand that Peggy was her mother and yes, it was perfectly all right that she call Peggy _mama_ , and Peggy's sister-in-law would always be Sarah's mommy too, and the touchy-feely nature of the conversation made Peggy grit her teeth. No one had treated children like that when Peggy was a child in the twenties – children were expected to just deal with things.

Although, Peggy had to admit after Sarah confidently slipped her little hand into Peggy's, perhaps there was something to be said for some of the modern child-rearing techniques after all.

"We gonna go to the park?" Sarah asked as they walked down the sidewalk, just like any mother and daughter might.

"Yes, love, we're going to the park," Peggy said. She couldn't stop scanning the surroundings for dangers, for snipers or suspicious packages or lingering operatives. It was no way for a child to live. "Do you like the park?"

Sarah gave a little skip. "I like swings but only when Daddy pushes me high."

"Well," Peggy said, wondering what Howard might say if he heard his daughter call someone else _daddy_. He probably wouldn't care; he'd never shown the slightest interest in the girl. "You can show me how high you want to go."

Once they got to the playground, Sarah let go of Peggy's hand and dashed for the swing set, her long brown hair streaming behind her. Peggy's breath caught in her throat as she watched her little girl, Howard's little girl, run across a quiet park in a quiet neighborhood in an unassuming corner of America.

Peggy was nearly fifty-five, didn't look a day over twenty-eighty. This wasn't her world any more. She might walk on its surface, fight for its right to exist, but this wasn't _hers_ anymore.

Then Sarah turned around, spotted Peggy, and waved her arms wildly. "Come push me, Mama Peggy!"

Peggy blinked back the sudden wetness in her eyes. "I'll be right there, darling."

Maybe it didn't matter if Peggy was the one out of time, stretched thin along the strands of history. Children like Sarah would soon have a chance.

* * *

Four months later, Peggy took Sarah on a trip to New York to see Howard.

It was a bad idea, probably one of the worst she'd ever had, but Peggy figured Howard had a right to see his daughter at least once more, even if the girl didn't know who he was.

And besides, Peggy wanted to see Maria and her little boy, Tony.

Sarah was quiet on the car ride from the airport, her nose pressed against the window looking out at the New York skyline. Peggy kept one hand on the girl's back to keep her from coming to grief in the event of a sudden stop, and wished she had something for her headache.

The taxi let them off in front of Howard's upscale mansion, a new addition to his property portfolio. Sarah hid behind Peggy, staring at the house in wonder. "Are we going to see the president?" she asked in a whisper.

"Heavens, no," Peggy said, pulling the girl along up the walk. "We're going to see my friends Howard and Maria."

"They have a little boy?"

"Yes, a little boy named Tony." Peggy rang the bell and waited. "He's a year younger than you."

"Is he nice?" Sarah asked.

"I don't know, I've never met him."

Sarah tugged on Peggy's sleeve until she looked down. "Do you like me more than him?"

There was worry in Sarah's eyes, so child-like and tremulous, that Peggy lifted the girl up to give her a hug. "I will always like you best," Peggy told her daughter, as the door opened and the very proper butler looked out at them.

"Miss Carter," the man said, stepping out of the way to let them in. "You are expected."

"I should hope so," Peggy said, making Sarah giggle. "Our bags are in the taxi."

She barely had a chance to step inside the foyer when she caught sight of Maria running down the stairs. "Peggy!" Maria exclaimed. "I'm so glad you could make it!"

Peggy put Sarah down and let Maria catch her up in a hug. The woman had changed in the years since Peggy had last seen her – thinner, paler, sharper around the edges. Peggy hoped it was just stress and not drugs or illness.

"I missed you," Maria whispered in Peggy's ear, holding her for a moment longer than strictly proper. Peggy gave Maria a quick kiss, pulling back to put her hand on Sarah's shoulder. "And this must be Sarah," Maria went on, smiling down at the girl. "I haven't seen you since you were a baby."

"What do we say?" Peggy prompted when Sarah tried to hide behind her leg.

Sarah poked her head out. "Hi, Mrs. Maria."

Maria smiled, going down on her knee to look Sarah in the eye. "You can just call me Maria." She held out her hands. "Come here, darling, let me look at you."

Sarah looked up at Peggy, then slowly walked over to Maria. The woman touched Sarah's cheek, and her smile dimmed slightly.

Peggy knew what Maria saw, how the girl resembled Howard Stark. It still surprised Peggy whenever she saw Sarah.

A loud rush approached them down the hall, and from around a corner burst a small boy, all wild hair and dirty clothes. This boy looked so much like Howard that Peggy's breath caught in her throat.

The boy stopped dead in the hall, staring at Sarah. "Who're you?" he demanded, walking over and draping himself over Maria's knee.

"I'm Sarah Carter," said Sarah. "Who are you and why are you so messy?"

"I'm building a robot," the boy said. "I'm Tony Stark and I live here. You wanna go build robots?"

Sarah's eyes went wide, and she nodded furiously. She turned around to look beseechingly up at Peggy. "Can we, Mama Peggy?"

"Of course," Peggy said, only slightly uneasy at sending Howard Stark's children off to play amongst the heavy machinery. "Try not to get too dirty."

Tony grabbed Sarah's hand and hauled her off down the hall. "Bye Mom!" Tony shrieked at the top of his lungs before the children disappeared around a corner.

Peggy raised her eyebrows at Maria. "So that's Anthony," she said.

Maria stood slowly, shaking her head. "He's such a strange child," Maria said. She linked her arm through Peggy's and guided her deeper into the house. "He's not kidding about building a robot, you know. I saw him installing a motor yesterday."

"How do you like being a mother?" Peggy asked.

Maria didn't answer at first. She led Peggy into a sun-lit parlor, took a seat on a wide sofa, and reached for a cigarette. Her hand shook as she held up the lighter.

Peggy sat across from Maria, folding her hands on her lap, and waited.

Finally, Maria blew out a mouthful of smoke. "Tony is an odd child," she said. "He's so very _smart_ and I just don't know what to do with him."

"What about Howard?" Peggy asked.

Maria let out a sharp laugh. "Howard doesn't know what to do with him either. We got Tony a mechanical toy for Christmas last year, and do you know what that boy did? He built a functioning computer. A _computer_ , Peggy. What kind of four-year-old can do something like that?"

There was a shiver in Maria's voice, one that pulled Peggy up off the couch and over to Maria's side. She put her arm around Maria's shoulders. "A child of Howard Stark," she murmured, breathing against Maria's hair.

  
A throat cleared discreetly. The butler stood in the parlor doorway. "Would you care for refreshments, madam?" he asked. "Early drinks, perhaps?"

Before Maria could say anything, Peggy put on a bright smile. "A pot of tea, if you would."

Maria sat up straighter. "Yes, Malcolm, and some sandwiches. Make sure the children have something to eat as well."

The butler nodded, and vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

Maria rubbed her forehead. "Does Sarah get up to such strange things?" she asked, getting back to the conversation.

Peggy shrugged. "My brother tells me that she's doing her older cousin's science homework. Matthew hates that, mostly because she's better at it than he is."

"Maybe she gets that from you," Maria pointed out.

"Doubtful," Peggy said. She curled up on the couch beside Maria, wondering how it was possible for this to feel so familiar and yet so very strange. "How is Howard?"

Maria fell silent for a long time, lighting another cigarette. Once the butler had returned with the tea and sandwiches, she finally said, "I don't know how Howard is, anymore."

* * *

After tea, Maria took Peggy down to the workshop in the basement where Sarah and Tony were covered in grease and having the time of their lives.

"What are you making?" Peggy asked, stepping carefully across the floor to the children.

"A robot!" Tony said scornfully. Sarah rolled her eyes at the attitude of the boy a year her junior. "It rolls."

"It could roll before," Sarah said. "Now it can _turn_."

"Can it?" came a deep familiar voice. Peggy turned around, and saw Howard Stark standing in the doorway.

He'd aged since she last saw him, and the distance of years from that first meeting in London in the middle of the War fell away, and Peggy found herself wondering when exactly it was that Howard had grown _old_.

"Daddy!" Tony shouted, jumping to his feet and running over. "Daddy, I made a robot that can _turn_!"

"Did not!" Sarah exclaimed hotly. "We both did!"

Tony was unrepentant. "We both did," he admitted, grabbing Howard's hand and pulling him across the floor. "Daddy, this is Sarah, she's really smart and she's my best friend and we're going to get married when we grow up!"

Howard ruffled Tony's hair. "That so, junior?" he said. "Okay, show me this robot you both built."

Tony immediately went off, talking a mile a minute, with Sarah interjecting forcefully every few words to correct Tony. Howard watched the girl more than the robot.

This was the first time that Howard had seen his daughter in nearly five years.

* * *

Peggy found Howard on the roof after midnight. The children were in bed, Sarah bunking in the nursery with Tony. Maria had disappeared soon after dinner, claiming she had a migraine.

It wasn't hard for Peggy to figure out where Howard had hidden himself; in war-time he'd been the one most likely to find his way up to the roof after the bombing raids. And sure enough, there he was, perched on a chair in the rooftop garden overlooking the city.

"Nice view," Peggy said, crossing the roof on silent feet.

"It's bought and paid for," Howard said without turning around. "So that's Sarah."

There was no need for an answer, so Peggy remained silent as she leaned over the low stone wall, looking out at the city. Quicksilver whispers drifted on the breeze, teasing Peggy in fragments and slivers.

"She's taller than I would have thought."

"My father was tall," Peggy said. She pushed off the wall and went back over to Howard. "What's going on?"

Howard let out a sigh, tilting his head back to look up at the stars. After a moment, he held out his hand to Peggy, who took it, sitting on his lap and curling up against his chest.

"Just like old times," Howard murmured, putting one hand on her thigh and the other around her waist. "I missed you."

"Howard, what happened? Why is everything so strange in your house?"

He kissed her softly, once, twice. "I should have married you right after the war," he said quietly. "Back in forty-six, when you moved to New York. I should have married you and we could have settled down, just have been done with it."

"Getting married doesn't end anything, Howard," Peggy pointed out. She sat up in his lap and made him look her in the eye. "And you didn't marry me, Howard, you married Maria. Now will you tell me what is going on?"

Howard kept her level gaze for a long moment. "You know, after you gave Sarah to your brother's family instead of me and Maria, I spent months thinking I hated you," he said, reaching up to brush his fingers over Peggy's throat. She let him. "But it was probably the best thing you could have done."

"Howard."

"Maria had a miscarriage," Howard blurted out. His hand clenched into a fist, and he lowered it to his lap. "A few months ago."

"Oh, Howard..."

"It was... it was pretty bad," he went on, looking out at the city. "She was so excited about another baby, but she went into labor when she was only five months along and the baby just... couldn't make it."

Peggy covered his hand with hers.

"Maria, she can't... the doctors said that something went wrong, that she can't have any more children." He cleared his throat. "It was going to be a girl."

"I'm so sorry, love," Peggy murmured, her stomach clenching. She remembered being pregnant, feeling every twitch of the child inside her belly. "How's Maria handling that?"

"I don't know," Howard said. "She doesn't talk to me anymore."

Peggy ran her thumb over his hand, wishing she could do something to help. She would have taken being in the field, facing down Hydra agents, over this – at least in battle she had some illusion of control.

"And Tony... maybe if he was _normal_ it wouldn't be so bad, but I don't know what to do with him."

"He's a child, Howard, it's not that difficult."

Howard snorted. "It's 1974, Peggs. I was born in 1914. Do you remember how they treated kids back then?"

"I'm only four years younger than you, old man," Peggy reminded him, shifting off his lap to squeeze in at his side. "Seen, not heard, and don't bother the adults at any time."

"Beatings delivered on a daily schedule," Howard added. "Now it's all feelings and talking. Tony has a time-out corner for when he's bad, Maria doesn't even spank the boy."

"Do you think it's going to make them weak?" Peggy asked, resting her head on Howard's shoulder. "If they don't get ‘toughened up' when they're young?"

Howard kissed the top of Peggy's head. "Ten years ago, I'd have said yes, but.... Jesus. You've seen Tony. He's just so small, how could anyone hurt someone that small?"

"Happened to me all the time," Peggy admitted.

"Same." Howard exhaled. "Sure as hell didn't toughen me up, all it did was make me hate my old man every day of my life."

"What does Maria think about Tony?" Peggy asked.

"I don't know," Howard confessed. "Since the miscarriage, she's been taking these pills the doctor gave her for the pain, they make her a little confused sometimes."

Peggy pulled back. Suddenly, everything about Maria's manner made sense. "You _idiot_ ," she said, standing up.

"What?"

Peggy shook her head. "Your wife is drugged up, she's _grieving_ , and you're not helping matters by hiding up here—"

"How the hell can I make her talk to me?" Howard demanded, climbing to his feet.

"I don't know, how about trying?" Peggy snapped. "Howard, Maria is _so_ young—"

"She's told me on several occasions that she doesn't need me—"

"Is that your idea of marriage?" Peggy demanded. "Just giving up? Because that doesn't sound like the Howard Stark I know—"

"How much could you possibly know about me?" Howard asked, his voice nearly in a yell. "You run away from me at every opportunity, you took my daughter away and gave her to _strangers_ —"

Peggy slapped him as hard as she could.

"It has been thirty-four years," she snapped, hands balled up into fists because she wanted to hit him again, he was being so stupid. "I've known you for _thirty-four years_ , so don't tell me I don't know you, because I know you better than anyone else alive."

Howard rubbed his cheek. "Like you said, Peggs, thirty-four years is one hell of a long time. Maybe you're just forgetting what I used to be like."

"You think I've forgotten what you were like?" Peggy demanded, incredulous. "What any of this was like? You have no idea what I remember about you, about our time together, any of it!"

Howard looked up sharply. "Peggy..."

"It doesn't matter," Peggy said, making herself unclench her fists. "It's in the past."

"It _does_ matter," Howard said. He took Peggy's hands in his. "What happened to you, with the Tesseract, with everything—"

"—Is over," Peggy finished for him. "Howard, my darling idiot, listen to me. What happened with you and me, all of it, that's over now. You have to take care of your wife and your son, because that's what's happening for you here and now." She folded his hands together. "Go to bed."

Howard let out a long breath. "You are still as bossy as you were when we first met," he said.

"And don't you forget it," Peggy said with a faint smile. "Go to bed."

"Maria won't wake up," Howard said. He retrieved his glass, still half-full of amber liquid. "She won't know I'm there."

"She'll know when she wakes up," Peggy pointed out.

"Yeah." Howard knocked back the rest of his drink and made a face at the glass. "I just can't help but think that every time she looks at me, she thinks about the baby."

"Does she blame you?"

Howard looked up at Peggy, and the expression on his face was not a comfortable one. "I don't know. Maybe I don't want to know."

Peggy took the glass out of Howard's hand and went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "Ask her," Peggy instructed. "Because if there's another thing I've noticed about you, Howard Stark, is that you always need to know the answer to every question, even if that answer hurts."

Howard sighed, rubbing his eyes. "You're terrifying sometimes, do you know that?"

"Go to bed."

"Fine," he muttered. He was halfway across the roof before he stopped and turned back to Peggy. A spasm of grief crossed his face in the faint light from the moon. "We were going to name the baby Margaret, you know."

Then he walked away.

Head aching and stomach churning, Peggy reached for the bottle of whisky beside Howard's abandoned chair. She didn't bother with a glass, just drank directly from the bottle, as her thoughts chased each other like ghosts in her head, sitting on the rooftop of the House of Stark, waiting for the sun to rise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet a young SHIELD agent, and there's a bit of character development throughout the eighties.

Peggy was on assignment in West Germany when the call came in. She was to report to SHIELD headquarters in Washington immediately.

It was clear that refusal was not an option.

The hours-long plane ride did nothing to quell Peggy's fury. By the time the plane landed at the private airstrip, she had decided that she was going to rip the Director into pieces, consequences be damned.

Agent Lewis met Peggy outside SHIELD's headquarters. "Ma'am," he said. "If you'll come with me—"

"Where is Director Jefferson?" Peggy demanded, stalking past her junior agent. "Does he have any idea exactly how much of my cover I had to burn to get out of Germany so fast?"

"Mr. Jefferson is no longer the Director," Lewis said. "Ma'am."

Peggy swung around, certain she had misheard. "What did you just say?"

Lewis had the good sense to look worried for his own safety. "It's just, ma'am..."

Peggy made a chopping motion with her hand, and Lewis fell silent. "What happened to Director Jefferson?" she asked.

Lewis took a breath. "Well, ma'am, there's been a bit of a coup in the upper echelons."

"A _coup_?" Peggy repeated in disbelief. "This is SHIELD, Agent Lewis, not South America! What is going on?"

Lewis opened his mouth, but Peggy didn't believe that he knew what was going on. She stalked off toward the Director's office. Honestly, she left the country for less than a year and SHIELD fell apart. Why wasn't she surprised?

The Director's assistant saw Peggy coming and tried to get in her way, but Peggy sidestepped the woman and threw open the Director's door.

The man sitting behind the Director's desk was not a surprise. The young agent standing by the window? Was.

"Agent Stoner," Peggy said to the man behind the desk. "What the hell do you think you're playing at?"

"That's Director Stoner," the man corrected her. "Senior Agent Margaret Carter, do you remember Junior Agent Nick Fury?"

Peggy narrowed her eyes at the new Director. "If you called me back to the States for introductions, I am going to shoot you and make it look like an accident," she promised icily. In the corner, Agent Fury smirked. "Do you have any idea what you interrupted?"

"Agent Carter, your field service has been valuable to SHIELD, but given the length of your tenure with the agency, you are being reassigned to training detail."

If she was angry before, that was nothing compared to the cold rage that swept through Peggy's veins now. "Am I given to understand, _Director_ ," Peggy said in her coldest British accent, "that SHIELD considers me too old to be in the field?"

"That's sure what it sounded like," Agent Fury said from the corner. "Ma'am."

Peggy leveled a finger at him. "I have a name, Mr. Fury, and it is not 'Ma'am'." She turned her attention back to the man behind the desk. "Mr. Stoner, I'm not sure what actions you've taken here at SHIELD, and quite frankly I don't care. But if you think that you can waltz in here and pull me out of the field, you are sorely mistaken."

"This isn't up for discussion, Agent Carter."

Silence settled. Then Peggy smiled, wide enough to show her teeth, and was pleased to see Stoner go pale. "Mr. Stoner, given all that you know about me, you know I'd rather resign my commission with SHIELD than to take a desk job. Now, tell me." Peggy crossed the floor to put her hands on the desk and leaned toward Stoner. "Do you really want me operating in the European theatre as a free agent?"

Stoner swallowed hard, his adam's apple bobbing. "SHIELD considers your level of skill and knowledge too valuable not to be passed on to a new generation of agents—" he started to say.

But Peggy didn't care what the man thought. "If you wanted me to mentor agents, Stoner, all you had to do was ask." She raised an eyebrow at Fury. "What are you doing with this one?"

Stoner pressed his lips together. "Implementing disciplinary proceedings, _Agent_ Carter. He's a loose canon and not fit for SHIELD."

"Hrm." Peggy gave Fury the once-over. The man was young, no doubt hot-headed. From his bearing, Peggy deduced he probably had a military background. He certainly had to be skilled in order to make it as far as Junior Agent under the old regime. "You want me to mentor junior agents, Stoner? I'll start with this one. Fury, with me."

With that, Peggy turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. She didn't need to look behind her to know that Fury was on her heels.

Down the hallways they walked, towards the armory. "So, Agent Fury," Peggy said conversationally. "Are you in the middle of any ongoing operations?"

"No, Agent Carter."

"Any hot spots? Places you ought to avoid?"

"Well, Brazil's a bit warm for me right now," Fury admitted.

"Excellent," Peggy said, taking the stairs two at a time. "Frankfurt is lovely these days. You'll be on holiday. People will be so busy being scandalized by us that they won't notice the sorts of questions we'll inevitably end up asking."

"And what exactly will we end up asking?" Fury asked, catching up with Peggy at the bottom of the stairs.

"I'll fill you in on the plane," Peggy told him. "Now, Agent Fury, one question. From the sounds of things, you have a bit of a problem with obeying orders, is this true?"

"Nope," Fury said. His eyes sparkled with the slightest hint of mischief. "Not the ones I agree with."

"As expected," Peggy said, raising her eyebrow at the man. "Stoner always did have a problem with independent initiative. Just be sure that said initiative doesn't get you shot, Agent."

"By the enemy or by friendly fire?" Fury inquired.

Peggy shrugged. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

Fury frowned slightly. "Do I have time to update my life insurance policy before we go?"

Peggy smiled. "First lesson," she said as she keyed her way into the armory. "Don't go out into the field with someone who you don't trust to have your back." She reached for a handgun on the wall, before grabbing a box of ammunition. "Don't put too much weight on an untested bond."

"Exactly how are you going to go about testing?" Fury asked warily.

Peggy tossed him the handgun. "Show me what you can do with that, then we'll talk."

Well, it was a start.

* * *

Peggy saw Howard from time to time. Sometimes, it was in New York with Maria, and things were almost like old times with the three of them. Other times, Peggy met Howard while the man was travelling for business. She knew what it looked like to outsiders; an older man having an affair with a much younger woman while far from home. She didn't care.

"Are you ever going to get tired of this?" Howard asked one night in Vienna in the mid-eighties. The hotel room was dark; the light from the moon and the city streets below streaming in through the open windows.

"Probably not," Peggy said. "After all this time, you're... familiar."

"Familiar," he repeated.

"Mmm-hmm. Like an old pair of socks."

"Is that a fact?" Howard pulled Peggy on top of him. "Old socks?"

Peggy couldn't keep from smiling down at Howard. "The kind you keep telling yourself you're going to throw away, or leave in the drawer, but you keep pulling them out because they just feel so good." She kissed the tip of his nose, then his lips, while his hands slid down to rest on her waist.

Things then proceeded along a familiar path for some time.

After, Howard stared up at the ceiling and said, "I'm old, Peggs."He let out a sigh. "Most days, it doesn't bother me, but recently... I feel it."

"You're seventy, Howard, not ninety," Peggy pointed out. "You still look like you're in your fifties, and if tonight is any indication, you have the libido of a thirty-year-old. So don't start with me about being old."

Howard caught her hand and kissed her wrist gently. "I used to think that the Tesseract didn't affect me at all, but maybe it did. Just a bit. Like it did you."

Peggy pressed her face against his neck, burrowing into his warmth. "You were exposed for a few seconds," she pointed out. "Anything is possible."

"I guess." Howard was quiet for a while. "Tony's in college now."

"Maria told me."

"He told me he doesn't want anything to do with Stark Industries when he graduates."

"That I doubt very much," Peggy said. "He's like a junior you, only far smarter."

"Hey."

"He's in MIT at fifteen, and even that is barely holding his interest," Peggy told him. She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. "But he's still that little boy who loves to build robots and blow things up. That sounds right up the alley of Stark Industries, doesn't it?"

Howard frowned at her. "How do you know that?"

Peggy shrugged, pulling the sheet over her knees. "Turns out that Tony and Sarah are pen pals. She told me last month."

"Jesus," Howard muttered.

"Take heart, darling," Peggy said. "At least he's talking to someone."

"I've never understood him," Howard said. "No one does. He's never had any friends, either. I just hope college doesn't screw him up any more than he already is."

"He'll be fine," Peggy told Howard. "Just let him be."

Howard reached past Peggy to turn off the light, and pulled her back down onto the bed. "Do me a favor, Peggs?"

"Wasn't twice tonight enough?"

"Not that." Howard took a deep breath. "If anything were to happen to me and Maria—"

"No, we are not having this conversation—"

"Peggy, _please_." When she subsided, Howard went on. "You know that Obadiah is Tony's godfather, but you... you're practical. About things. I need you to keep an eye out for Tony."

Peggy sighed. "You know I will, you idiot."

"Thank you." Howard kissed the top of Peggy's head.

"Now can we go to sleep?"

"Anything you want, Peggy."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting Howard and Maria Stark's death on Dec. 17, 1991, comes from some extras in the Avengers movie universe [[source](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3jus1eiBN1qd557ro1_500.jpg)].

_Dec. 17, 1991_

The Soviet Union was crumbling across Europe and Peggy hadn't slept in days.

After a week of constantly monitoring intelligence coming in from their operatives across Europe and Asia, the chaos was starting to die down, and it looked like they might just get through this without the world catching fire.

Needing to burn off some nervous energy, Peggy was on the firing range when the news came about Howard and Maria.

She was halfway through a clip of bullets when she felt a presence behind her; knew without turning that it was Nick Fury. She fired her last bullet and removed her ear protection before turning around.

The expression on Nick's face froze Peggy in place. Before he could say a word, she blurted out, "Sarah?"

Nick shook his head. "Your daughter is fine," he said. "But..."

Peggy closed her eyes. Nick knew there was only two people on earth other than Sarah who Peggy cared about. And only one of those people skirted death as much as she did, after all these years. "Howard."

Nick cleared his throat. "Howard and Maria," he said gently, and Peggy's eyes flew open.

"What?" she demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Ma'am—Margaret," Nick corrected himself. "A few hours ago, a car chartered by Stark Industries drove off an embankment in New York State. Howard and Maria Stark were the only passengers. They... well, there were no survivors."

Peggy felt as if she was going to be sick. This wasn't real. Howard, she could understand; they'd been in the War together, had been cheating death together for decades. It made sense.

But Maria? The last time Peggy had seen Maria, it had been in New York; they'd taken Sarah shopping for a dress for her college winter formal, then Peggy and Maria spent the afternoon walking arm in arm around the museum. They were supposed to meet up again at Christmas in New York, Maria had made Peggy promise.

Peggy took in a deep breath and let it out. "Was it a targeted attack?" she asked, pressing her hand flat against her stomach.

"At this time it appears to be an accident," Nick said carefully. "Because of Mr. Stark's role in SHIELD, we'll be conducting a full investigation. But it doesn't look like this was anything other than an accident."

"Accidents don't happen to people like us, Nick."

"Except when they do, Margaret," Nick said, voice quiet.

Peggy turned her back on him, picking up the handgun and dismantling it in a few seconds. "Has someone told their son?"

"The police contacted him an hour ago," Nick said. "He knows."

Peggy set the pieces of the handgun on the firing range shelf, pressing her thumb against a sharp edge. Young Tony was twenty-one; Peggy had last seen him at a party Howard threw in New York the previous summer. The boy had been on the edge of manic by eight o'clock, vanishing down to his basement workroom by nine and was back upstairs with a new robotic gadget by eleven.

And now his parents were gone.

Quickly, Peggy reassembled her handgun and slipped it into her shoulder holster. "I need some personal time," she told Nick. "Barring the Soviets starting a nuclear war, don't need me for anything."

Nick waited until Peggy was at the door before saying, "I'm sorry, Margaret."

Peggy didn't reply. To the world at large, Howard had never been hers to begin with. If Nick Fury knew otherwise, well, that wasn't any of his business.

When she got home, she didn't bother to turn on the lights, just dropped her keys on the counter and picked up the phone. She dialed Sarah's number from memory and sat, staring at nothing, until the other end of the line picked up.

"Hello?"

Peggy opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Hello?" Sarah asked again. "Is anyone there?"

"It's me, love," Peggy got out.

"Mama Peggy, hi!" Sarah replied, sounding excited. "You never call during the week, what's happening?"

Peggy rested her head against the wall, all alone in her darkened apartment. "It's your father, love. There's..."

Breathe. Just breathe.

"There's been an accident."

* * *

The funeral was held two days after Christmas. By then, they'd scraped together enough body parts to make a positive identification on Howard and Maria and the driver. Peggy had been told that Tony Stark tried to push his way into the morgue. It had taken three police officers to hold him back; to keep him from seeing what was left of his parents' bodies.

It was for the best. Peggy had slipped in after-hours the day before. There wasn't anything left of Howard or Maria in the burned-out remains on the coroner's metal tables.

They'd had to use dental records to identify the bodies, in any event.

The interment had been painful. Sarah cried as she held Peggy's hand, far back from the burial plots. Peggy was too busy watching the closed coffins being lowered into the ground to pay attention to much else, but the SHIELD agents undercover as private security later told her that it didn't appear as if anyone suspicious attended.

Now, Peggy stood in the entranceway to Howard's New York mansion, still decorated for a Christmas the Starks would never celebrate, and wished heartily she was already drunk.

"Obadiah," Peggy called after a tall man. Obadiah Stane, Howard's business partner, turned at the sound of his name. "Have you seen Tony?"

"Not since we got back from the cemetery," he said. "Look, if you don't mind, I need to talk to Malcolm about the preparations for the wake, people will be arriving soon."

"Go," Peggy said, dismissing the man with a wave. She turned to Sarah, who was sitting on the inside stairs. "Are you going to be alright if I go find Tony?"

Sarah sniffed. Her eyes were still red, but other than that, she appeared composed. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Peggy didn't believe her. After dropping a kiss on her daughter's hair, Peggy squared her shoulders and went to brave the lion in its den.

Tony Stark was in the basement. Rather, Tony Stark was destroying the basement.

Peggy stood on the bottom step, watching as Tony flung a piece of machinery at the wall with enough force to dent the concrete. Then another. On the third piece, he noticed Peggy standing there, and his grip on the computer monitor slipped, sending the thing crashing to the ground in a shatter of glass and plastic.

Tony kicked the monitor, then stumbled to a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table by the wall. "And it's Queen Margaret, keeper of the dead," Tony said, hoisting the bottle. "Saw you at the funeral. Thought you'd be whooping it up in a red dress."

Peggy picked her way across the cluttered floor. "You need to sober up," she told Tony, reaching for the bottle. He tried to evade her, but he was drunk and she had decades of experience on him. "What's wrong with you? People will be here in under an hour."

"What's wrong with me?" Tony demanded, flinging his arms wide. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes, fueled by grief and alcohol and God knew what else. "In case you hadn't got the memo, _Aunt Peggy_ , I'm an orphan now. Last of the grand old House of Stark." He grinned, sharp and horrible. "Unless my father's got any other bastards lying in wait for the reading of the will."

Peggy jerked around to stare at Tony. He glared back, expression ugly. "Don't speak about Sarah in that way," Peggy said evenly, capping the vodka bottle and putting it on a shelf beside some motor oil. "She's no more responsible for her parentage than you are."

"She's not responsible, but you are," Tony said. He reached down and picked up a pipe wrench, turning it over in his hand before flinging it down into a pile of junk. "Did you and my father really think I wouldn't notice what you were getting up to when my mother wasn't around?"

"Tony—"

"Do you know how he'd talk about you when he got back from all those business trips? Did you think I wouldn't have figured out that you weren't my parents' friend, that for all these years you were just my father's _whore_?"

Peggy bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood. Tony turned and stumbled, going down in a pile of splintered metal, and for a moment, Peggy contemplated leaving him there, Howard's angry, spiteful, hurtful son.

Peggy could barely hear Tony's labored breathing over the roaring in her ears. She thought at first Tony was speaking, but the whispers grew harsher, twisted. When Peggy thought about leaving Tony there, just walking away from him, all she saw was darkness.

Then the moment passed, and Tony was still on the ground, trying to find his way out of the mess.

Peggy walked over to Tony and took his arm, pulling him up and marching him over to the far wall. She shoved him onto the bench and reached for his hands. There were glass slivers embedded in his skin, blood dripping onto the floor.

"Hold still," she ordered, pulling the well-used first aid kit from under the bench and opening it between them. Tony just stared at his bleeding hands. It took Peggy a few minutes to remove the slivers of glass, bandaging the worst of the cuts as she went. Tony was unresponsive, but Peggy couldn't tell if that was the fault of the vodka or something else.

Finally she finished patching up the last of Tony's wounds. Pushing the first aid kit under the bench, she sat beside Tony, contemplating the wreckage.

"Don't give your mother too little credit," Peggy finally said. "She knew exactly who your father was."

Tony groaned. "Are you actually trying to tell me that everything's fine because my mother _knew_ Howard was screwing around on her?"

Peggy ran her tongue over her teeth, wincing at the tender spot. It would be so much easier just to tell Tony the truth; but there was so much about Howard and Maria's life that their son didn't need to hear right now. Maybe not ever.

"Is there anything I can say that's going to make you not hate me?" Peggy asked.

"I highly doubt it," Tony snapped. He put his head into his hands.

"Are you going to be sick?"

"No. I need another drink."

"You need no such thing," Peggy said sharply. "What you need to do is to sober up, clean yourself up, go upstairs, and fool the investors and the board of directors into thinking you're actually capable of running your father's company—"

"What the fuck for?" Tony demanded, sitting up and nearly toppling off the bench. "My parents are dead and all you can think about is the fucking _company_?"

Peggy grabbed Tony's arm, hauling him upright. "That's all they're going to be thinking about—"

"Fuck them!"

"—and about how you're not Howard!" Tony went sheet-white at her words, and she knew how this had to hurt, how much Maria would hate her for doing this to her little boy, but this was so much bigger than Tony's grief. "Tony, they're going to look at you and see the boy who lost his parents, not the man who owns a controlling interest in Stark Industries. And they're going to go away and do whatever they can to force you out."

Tony was breathing heavily, still pale, and this wasn't Howard's anger in Tony but Maria's, and that was so much worse. "What makes you think I _want_ to run the company?" he demanded.

Peggy let go of Tony's arm and stood up. She had to give him space, because if he couldn't handle it now, he'd never be able to pull it off in a room full of his father's friends. "Don't you?" she asked, making it sound off-hand. "Getting a chance to improve on what Howard created?"

Slowly, Tony got to his feet. He didn't sway, didn't stagger. Maybe his fury was a sobering influence. "Why the fuck should I give a damn about the company?" he asked. "It was _his_ , that was all he ever gave a fuck about, it sure as hell wasn't me."

A faint movement in the corner of Peggy's vision, a wisp of black fabric, warned her that Sarah was in the doorway. But Peggy couldn't stop, not yet, not until Tony could focus. "Because the other option is that Howard's company, everything that Stark Industries is and could possibly become goes into the hands of people who only want the _money_ , Tony. They only saw what Howard presented at Board meetings, they don't know how much potential SI has. They never saw what Howard could see."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Because you see what your father saw," Peggy insisted. "The first time I met you, you built a robot just because you could. You understand that Stark Industries is more than just how many weapons you can build, what you can destroy. It's about what you can _create_!"

"That doesn't mean anything," Tony spat, spreading his hands. "Dear old Dad was pretty clear to tell me every single time I came home that I didn't know a damn thing about anything!"

Peggy took a deep breath and did something unforgivable. "If you're not going to do it for Howard, fine, I don't care. Do it for your mother."

Tony stared at Peggy, his eyes wide.

"Go up there and pretend that you're a reasonable human being who is capable of civilized behavior and don't embarrass your mother on the day of her funeral. She raised you better than that!"

Before Tony could gather his wits to respond, Sarah picked her way across the debris-strewn floor, and took his arm. "Come on," she said in a quiet voice. "Let's find you a clean shirt and some coffee before everyone gets here."

Still staring at Peggy, Tony let Sarah guide him towards the door.

Sarah never looked back.

Peggy was left alone in the destroyed basement, Tony's ruined experiments scattering the floor. She'd had to do it, she told herself. SHIELD couldn't run the risk of someone else gaining control of Stark Industries, not with the classified development work that was just finishing up. Without Howard's brilliance, the project might not succeed, but if an outsider came in now, finding out SHIELD secrets, that would be more disastrous than the project collapsing in on itself.

She'd had to do it.

Tony would never forgive her, that she knew. She had no idea what Sarah was thinking.

Peggy left the basement. On the main level, mourners were gathering, voices hushed as the gossip flowed. Peggy waited until there was a break in the traffic in the lobby, then slipped up the stairs to the second level.

Tony's bedroom was on the other side of the house, no doubt where Sarah had taken him to change his shirt. Peggy drifted down the hallway, the silence oppressive. At the end of the hall, Peggy paused in the doorway of Howard and Maria's bedroom. The bed was neatly made, the closet doors shut. The only sign that the maids hadn't been in here to pack away the belongings of the dead was the dressing table. Maria's jewelry lay strewn haphazardly on the surface, a lone diamond earring on the wood surface beside a long strand of pearls.

The room still smelled of Maria's perfume and Howard's aftershave and of _them_ , and Peggy closed her eyes against the onslaught of memory, of her and Maria and Howard in this room, in their bed, just.... together.

She hadn't cried. Not since she'd been told of their deaths. At first, she'd thought it was just the shock, but now...

She wasn't _right_ , Howard had said once. Not since the Tesseract. She didn't act like a normal person, not any more.

A normal person wouldn't have been capable of saying the things she'd said to Tony on the day he had buried his parents.

Opening her eyes, Peggy crossed the room and pulled open the small drawer on the dressing table, intending to put the earring away, but when she saw what was inside the drawer, she froze.

Maria had tucked a photograph away in the drawer. Battered and unframed, it showed Peggy and Howard and Maria, together, in Howard's old apartment, two years before Sarah was born. Howard was on the couch, Maria in his lap and Peggy curled up at his side, one of her hands on Howard's shoulder and the other on Maria's knee.

Howard had said he was testing a new timer for his camera, Peggy vaguely remembered. They'd piled together on the couch and taken dozens of increasingly scandalous pictures and the next morning Howard had sworn he would burn the negatives. Peggy had flown off to Europe for a classified mission and hadn't seen them again for months.

They had been so _young_.

It was hard to breathe. Carefully, Peggy picked up the photograph and slipped it into her pocket. She didn't care about the house or the inheritance or any of it, but this photograph was hers. Howard and Maria; she was the only one with any right to them like this.

"Mama?"

Peggy turned her head. Sarah was standing in the doorway, looking seven types of angry. "Is Tony downstairs?"

"Yeah, he's cleaned up and putting on one hell of a show," Sarah said. She dug her fingernails into the doorframe. "What you said, in the basement..."

Her voice trailed off as she struggled for the words, and Peggy just waited.

"That was horrible. What you said to Tony."

"Yes, it was," Peggy agreed. She slid the drawer closed and faced her daughter straight on. "But someone needed to say it."

"No, they didn't," Sarah objected. "Not you, and not today."

"This isn't a game, Sarah," Peggy said. "What happens with Stark Industries—"

"Are you even listening to yourself?" Sarah demanded. "Who cares about the company? If Mom and Dad died, I sure as hell wouldn't have give an damn about their jobs!"

Peggy thought about explaining as best she could, trying to mend this rift with her daughter, but the words were like stones in her stomach.

So she just crossed the room and put her arms around Sarah, a hug that the girl hesitated before returning. Her daughter; Howard's daughter. Peggy remembered how tiny Sarah was when she was a baby, so helpless and delicate.

Now she was all grown up.

Peggy pulled back, smiling faintly as she brushed the hair back from Sarah's forehead. "I should go," she said. "I'm pretty sure Tony won't have any use for me remaining."

Sarah sniffled. "I'm going to stay for a few days, in case he needs anything," she said warily, as if Peggy might object.

"Good. Try to make sure he doesn't drink himself to death."

"I'll try." Another sniffle as Peggy kissed Sarah's cheek, then turned to go. "Mama?"

Peggy stopped.

"Why didn't Howard want me?" Sarah asked in a rush. "I know, there's the thing about bastard children, but why didn't... I mean, Maria liked me, right?"

Peggy took Sarah's chin in her hand, making the girl look at her. "Don't you ever call yourself a bastard again, do you understand me?" Peggy said, feeling the familiar anger in her gut, at Howard, at herself. Sarah nodded. "And yes, Maria loved you so, so much, ever since the first day she met you."

Tears filled Sarah's eyes. "But Howard..."

Peggy sighed. "I know, love. I know."

Sarah wrapped her arms around Peggy and clung to her. Peggy patted Sarah's back, waiting for the tears to slow. "I need you to remember something," Peggy said into Sarah's ear. "That your Mom and your Dad, the ones who raised you, they love you so much."

"I know," Sarah mumbled against Peggy's shoulder. "I do."

"And I love you too," Peggy said, with a final squeeze. "Always. Forever. Okay?"

"Yes, Mama Peggy," Sarah said, sniffling. Her eyes were red. "I just... you know. I miss them already."

"I know, love."

With one final hug, Peggy left the room, leaving her daughter behind. Sarah was young and she was smart and moreover she was practical. She'd deal with her grief and her anger at Howard, put it away, move on with her life.

Not for the first time, Peggy sent a silent thanks to her brother and his wife, for giving Sarah the love and support that Peggy would never had been able to give.

The crowd on the main floor had grown, both in size and in volume. All of Howard's friends deep into the liquor, to toast the dearly departed couple.

Peggy shook her head, and walked out the front door.

She nearly tripped on Tony, sitting on the front step. "Leaving so soon?" he asked. His voice sounded stronger than it had in the basement.

"I shouldn't be here," Peggy told him.

"Not going to disagree," Tony said.

With a sigh, Peggy headed down the steps. She needed to get away from this house, from these people.

"Was Dad happy when he was with you?" Tony called after her. She turned back to him. "More than with me and Mom?"

Peggy wondered what he was thinking, this young brilliant grieving boy. She could feel the press of the photograph sharp in her pocket, and so she gave him the truth. "You and Maria made Howard as happy as I've ever seen him."

Tony made a noise in the back of his throat. "That's really too fucking bad," he muttered.

Peggy left, walked out of the gate to the street and caught a cab back to her hotel.

In an hour, she was at the airport, buying a seat on the first plane out. Nine hours later, she was in Hawaii.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

Hawaii was irritatingly sunny for December. Of course, Peggy reflected as she sat on the patio of her hotel pool, Hawaii was always irritatingly sunny. Over the years, she'd been on assignment three time on these islands, and every time the weather had been bright and warm and annoyingly perfect.

Knowing that Howard or Maria would never be able to join her in Hawaii, made it even worse.

The funeral had been four days ago; Peggy had been in Honolulu for three. She spent the days pretending to be a tourist; at night she sat up in her hotel room staring out the window, unable to sleep for longer than an hour at a time. No sooner did she nod off before her mind hauled her back to consciousness with screaming nightmares of car crashes and fire and death.

Still, there wasn't anything to go back to. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was continuing, albeit sluggishly. From what Peggy saw in the papers and read between the lines on the television broadcasts, it seemed that usual suspects were keeping their heads down and waiting for the dust to settle before trying anything.

Peggy wasn't surprised. She had spent over a decade picking off the more unstable intelligence operatives, not all of them on the other side. The previous year, she'd authorized a mission that ended in the death of one particularly unhinged Soviet agent. The man was a liability to anyone on either side of the Cold War; the whole of Europe had breathed a sigh of relief at his death.

Peggy was never the one to pull the trigger, but the missions and the agents involved were all Peggy's creations. She'd killed those men and women as sure as if she'd been standing in the room with them.

 _And this is what you've become,_ Howard would have said. Howard was the only one who understood what she did, for the sake of country and of peace. Howard understood, because he was very much the same sort of man.

But now, Howard was dead, and who was left to understand Peggy?

She left the pool to the screaming tourists and headed out into the city.

She'd already done the usual tourist haunts. The previous day, she'd lasted nearly an hour at the Pearl Harbor memorial before the ghosts of the War drove her into the salt-tinged air, skin crawling and sick to her stomach with memories of the dead.

It didn't help that everywhere she went, she was reminded of Howard.

Not Maria. Not yet. Peggy had been preparing for Howard's death for years; probably since the day she met him in 1940. It had been war, and they'd both known that one of them would have to go first.

But not Maria. That wasn't how it was supposed to go.

So Peggy sat on the bus with the rest of the tourists, obediently disembarked at the botanical gardens, walked around and looked at the flowers and all she could think was how much Maria would have enjoyed this.

Once, as Peggy was bending to look closer at a plant, a thin sliver-blue whisper plucked at her attention. She turned her head, her hand already going for the knife she had hidden in purse, but nothing presented itself as a threat. Nothing seemed out of place.

Peggy couldn't shake the disquiet that followed her all afternoon. Every time she turned around, everything was as it should be.

Peggy should have done the sensible thing; tuck herself into a safe house and call for SHIELD backup.

But Howard and Maria were dead and Peggy was the only one left. To hell with the sensible thing.

As darkness fell on the island, Peggy went back to her hotel. She pulled on a slinky black dress, put on a lipstick so red it made the bellboy trip over his feet on the way to get the door for her, and made her way to one of the city's most exclusive nightclubs.

There she sat, sipping on expensive cocktails and fending off potential suitors until the wee hours, when the threat finally made itself known.

Out from the crowd on the dance floor emerged the woman, short and curvaceous in all the right ways, her blood-red hair gleaming under the club's shimmering lights. One would have to look closely to see the strength in the muscles shifting under her skin, the mind of a killer hidden behind brilliant green eyes.

The Black Widow.

Peggy waited as the woman walked up the steps, attracting attention from everyone in the club. Peggy found herself smiling in greeting, more a baring of the teeth from behind red-stained lips.

"Margaret," the other woman said, voice barely audible over the music. She stopped by Peggy's side, so close that her hip brushed Peggy's shoulder as she leaned down to kiss the air beside Peggy's cheek.

"Natasha," Peggy said in response as Natasha Romanova, the deadliest Soviet agent Peggy ever faced, slid into the empty chair to Peggy's left. Peggy raised her glass in a mock toast. "I've been waiting for you."

It wasn't entirely accurate; Peggy had known she was being followed, but had no idea that it had been the Black Widow on her trail.

And why now? The Soviet Union was in pieces; intelligence agencies around the world on lock-down until everything settled. Why was the KGB's best agent be in Hawaii?

Peggy waited while Natasha arranged her tiny purse on the table, ordered a drink from the waitress, then sat back to watch the dancers. "You didn't see me today," the woman finally said.

Peggy took a sip from her glass. "Once upon a time, I spent a great deal of effort figuring you out," she said, casting her mind back to the young woman Natasha had once been. "It's not something one just forgets."

Natasha raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at Peggy, but refrained from comment. She accepted her martini from the waitress and took a long drink. "That was a very long time ago," she eventually said.

"Have you forgotten any of it?" Peggy asked.

Natasha smiled, an expression both predatory and promising. "No more that you have, Margaret."

The song on the speakers shifted to another, the dancing continued on the floor below. Peggy was very aware of the nearness of the woman beside her, her body warm through her thin dress as she pressed in at Peggy's side.

Peggy's fingers tightened around the stem of her glass as she kept her breathing even. Natasha Romanova was a very beautiful woman, and even the fact that she was probably going to try to kill Peggy wasn't enough to keep Peggy from reacting to her presence.

Or maybe that was _why_ Peggy's heart was racing. It had been decades since Natasha last tried to kill Peggy. Peggy still had the scar from their last encounter, a thin curve of raised skin under her breast from the upward thrust of Natasha's blade, just barely missing her heart.

Peggy wet her lips, tasting the sweet-sour tang of her drink and the red of her lipstick, and wondered how Natasha would come for her this time.

Natasha took another drink from her glass, tilting her head back to expose her throat. She set the glass on the table and leaned closer to Peggy with a smile. "There are a lot of people who are very angry with you these days," Natasha said, the smile on her face belying the dagger-sharp animosity in her voice. "How does it feel to have toppled an empire?"

A chill crawled down Peggy's spine at the malice in Natasha's words, but she kept her eyes on the dance floor. "I did no such thing and you know it, _devushka_ ," Peggy said.

Natasha's eyes narrowed at the word and the first cracks appeared in her expression, showing her anger. "You think we don't know what you did?" Natasha said, close enough now for her lips to brush Peggy's ear. "You've spent decades trying to rip the Soviet Union to pieces, all for your precious West—"

"I've been trying to prevent nuclear war," Peggy interrupted. Anger stirred hot in her belly. The only reason she didn't haul back and punch Natasha was that they were in public and she had no desire to be arrested. "For forty-six years, everything I've done has been to keep us from a nuclear war—"

"Is that what you tell yourself?" Natasha demanded, sitting back and picking up her empty glass.

Peggy stared at the woman for a long moment. "I've seen the plans of what would happen if your side had launched your weapons first," Peggy said, not caring if anyone overheard. It didn't really matter anymore. "Care to guess how many of your citizens would have been wiped out in the first three hours?"

"This is how you justify yourself," Natasha snapped. "You play people like puppets on a string and say it's all for peace? Who said you should play as a god?"

Their argument was starting to attract unwarranted attention. Peggy smiled as she picked up her drink. "Have any idea who could do it better, love?"

Natasha snatched up her purse and stalked away, shoving her way through the crowd. Peggy watched her go, suddenly feeling exhausted and old. There were so few people left who remembered the past, and with Howard dead, all Peggy had left were enemies.

She finished her drink and stood up to leave when the waitress hurried over. "Excuse me," the girl said apologetically, "But your friend left without paying for her drink."

Peggy sighed, and reached into her purse for some money.

The air outside the club hit Peggy like a shock, clean and cool and quiet. With a shiver, she headed down the sidewalk toward the taxi stand.

A red-headed woman was waiting there, leaning against a parked car smoking a cigarette. Natasha watched Peggy walk toward her, motionless except for the rise and fall of her chest as she exhaled.

"It was never like you to run out on the tab," Peggy observed, pulling her cigarette case from her purse.

Natasha offered her lighter to Peggy. "You can afford it."

Peggy raised an eyebrow as she lit the cigarette. "Is there some reason you're standing around in the dark?" she asked around the first mouthful of smoke.

"I'm not waiting for an accomplice, if that's what you're asking." Natasha flipped her hair over her shoulder. "Go away."

Peggy looked closely at Natasha. In the harsh light from the street lights and the neon blue glare from a nearby window, Peggy could see that the woman had faint circles under her eyes, that she stood favoring her left leg. Peggy wondered when Natasha had last slept.

Peggy took one last pull on the cigarette and flicked the thing into the street. "Come on," she said, turning toward the corner where a few cabs stood waiting.

"Where?" Natasha asked. She didn't move.

"I'm on vacation," Peggy said over her shoulder. "I'm going back to my hotel. Coming or not?"

Peggy had her hand on the cab's door handle when she heard the tap-tap of high-heels behind her, and she smiled.

* * *

The room was dark when Peggy turned the key in the hotel room door, Natasha standing a decorous distance from her. It was close to three in the morning, the time of night when the human body struggled to stay conscious, and none of the hotel staff had so much as batted an eye as Natasha and Peggy had walked through the lobby.

Natasha had said little in the cab, just stared out the window, her fingers worrying the clasp of her tiny purse.

But now, as Peggy closed the door of the hotel room, there were no prying eyes, no pretences to keep up.

Well. Perhaps only those with each other.

Peggy turned the deadbolt in the lock and slid the chain into place. Natasha was a warm presence in the darkness, standing just behind Peggy, and she didn't protest when Peggy pushed her hard against the wall and kissed her. Peggy tangled her hand in Natasha's hair and when Natasha broke the kiss, Peggy pulled Natasha's head back and licked a line down Natasha's throat. Natasha let out a sharp moan and dug her fingers into Peggy's arms, tightening her grip until Peggy let go of Natasha's hair.

They stood like that for a time, breathing heavily in the dark. It had been decades since Peggy had taken any woman other than Maria to her bed, and she'd forgotten how it could feel, that illicit thrill somehow _different_ from being with a man, of soft skin and curves, the shiver down her spine that came from small hands curving around her waist.

It hadn't really been like that with Maria; at first because Howard was always there, then later, when it was just the two of them when Howard was away, it had felt indescribably _right_.

Only now Maria was dead and Peggy would never have her back again.

Peggy rested her head on Natasha's shoulder. All the anger and grief she'd held back over losing Maria churned up in her stomach, making her sick, making her furious. Peggy couldn't even mourn Maria properly; she'd been another man's wife. No one knew what there had been between Peggy and Maria and Howard. If they did, they wouldn't understand.

"Shh," Natasha whispered, running her hands down Peggy's back. She kissed Peggy on the cheek until Peggy lifted her head, then she kissed Peggy's lips softly. "Come with me."

"Where?" Peggy asked. She should turn on the lights, tell Natasha to leave, spend another night alone. But she stayed where she was, pressed against Natasha in the darkened hallway.

Natasha tilted Peggy's head back and kissed a line down Peggy's throat before flicking her tongue along Peggy's collarbone. "I'll make it not hurt so much," she promised, before taking hold of Peggy's hand and pulling her across the room to the bed.

Peggy wanted to tell Natasha that nothing would make this hurt any less, but she couldn't manage to form the words as Natasha slipped Peggy's dress off her shoulders to the floor, pushed Peggy to the bed and slid against her, skin on skin, touching and tasting until Peggy choked back a cry as she came.

It took her a few minutes to get her breath back, Natasha curled up at her side. "What was that about?" Peggy asked eventually.

Natasha slid her leg over Peggy's thigh, the friction making Peggy shiver. "You think you're the only one who's lost everything?" she asked, her Russian accent coloring her words for the first time.

Peggy reached out and turned on the bedside lamp. Natasha blinked in the sudden light. "What do you know about what I've lost?" Peggy asked.

Natasha rolled onto her stomach and stared up at Peggy. "Howard Stark," Natasha said. "The affair between you and him was never really a secret, was it? Even his wife knew."

Peggy lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling, wondering if she was supposed to be angry. All she felt was that sick, bitter sensation in her stomach again. "Of course Maria knew," Peggy said, tired of everything. "She was nearly always there with us."

Natasha moved against Peggy, leaning over her so Peggy had no choice but to look at her. "No one knew that," Natasha said. She traced a finger over Peggy's lips. "You were very good at hiding."

Peggy pushed Natasha away and sat up, pulling her knees against her chest. "It doesn't matter," she muttered.

Maria was dead. Howard was dead. The only people who remembered the past were people like Natasha Romanova, on the other side of the pretend line in the sand.

One of these days, even her enemies would be dead, and Peggy wouldn't have anyone left.

Peggy pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked down at Natasha, lying on the bed. Even worn-out and exhausted, the woman was breathtakingly beautiful.

And Peggy wasn't dead yet.

Peggy ran her hand down Natasha's side, from breast to hip, watching in satisfaction as Natasha's eyes darkened. Peggy didn't know if it was an honest reaction or an act, and for the time being, she didn't really care.

Leaving the light on, Peggy pulled Natasha underneath her and hoped that, if even for a few minutes, she could use the sensation of Natasha's body against hers to _forget_.

* * *

Peggy opened her eyes, head pounding and body aching.

"You're awake."

The voice pulled Peggy upright, reaching for a weapon before she registered what was happening. Natasha was lying beside her in the bed, an eyebrow arched in amusement.

Peggy let out a breath. "Why are you still here?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Because I don't run out after a night of passion," Natasha said pointedly.

Peggy dropped her hand to her lap and glared. "Really, you're on about that? That happened nearly _thirty years ago_."

Natasha sat up, pushing her hair over her shoulder. "You're surprised that I remembered?"

"Actually, no," Peggy said, looking around for her purse. She needed a cigarette. "I'm surprised that you didn't murder me in my sleep."

Natasha shrugged, a move that was very distracting in her unclothed state. "If I kill you now, I have to go through the trouble of figuring out who SHIELD will replace you with," she pointed out as she slid out of bed. "Far better to know the enemy you have."

Peggy caught Natasha's wrist and pulled her over. "You think you understand me?"

Natasha ran a hand over Peggy's head, tucking a strand of brown hair behind Peggy's ear. "More than you imagine," Natasha said quietly. "Does it matter?"

"Everything matters in this line of work, you know that."

A knock sounded on the door, and they both froze.

"Expecting a visitor?" Natasha asked, pulling back from Peggy. If she went for a weapon now, Peggy would attack, no questions asked.

"Are you?" Peggy shot back.

"You think I want anyone to find me here?" Natasha demanded. Without stopping for clothes, she walked toward the door and looked through the peephole.

Just when Peggy thought Natasha was going to come back into the room, Natasha undid the chain, flipped the deadbolt and pulled open the door, completely naked.

Peggy pulled the sheet up to her chest as the young man on the other side of the door looked down Natasha's body, then back up to make eye contact. "Margaret Carter?" he said.

Natasha turned and walked back into the room, leaving the door wide open. "It's one of yours," she said to Peggy as she shimmied into her dress. Natasha did up the zipper, then retrieved her panties from the floor and pushed them into her purse, stepped into her shoes and walked out the open door without a backwards glance.

Peggy wasn't certain if the act had been for her or the man at the door.

The man glanced after Natasha. "Would you like me to follow her, ma'am?" he asked Peggy.

Peggy pushed her hand against her forehead, feeling her headache returning. "Who _are_ you?" she demanded.

"Agent Phillip Coulson, ma'am," the man said. He made no move to enter the room. "Agent Fury sent me."

Peggy wasn't sure if she believed the man or not, but this whole farce had gone on long enough. "Go wait in the restaurant," she ordered. "And do not follow that woman, I have enough on my plate without needing to tell Nick he's lost another junior agent to the Soviets."

Agent Coulson gave a nod and wordlessly pulled the door closed.

Once the latch clicked, Peggy got out of bed and retrieved her handgun from the bedside table. Holding it at the ready, she went to lock the door. Just in case.

She left the gun on the counter in the bathroom as she showered in case any other unexpected visitors dropped in.

Half an hour and one rather tense phone call later, Peggy made her way across the hotel lobby to the restaurant. Agent Coulson was supping a cup of coffee, seated away from the windows where he could keep an eye on the rest of the room.

"Phillip," Peggy said in something of a greeting, dropping into a chair across from the man. "I talked to Nick about you."

"And?" Agent Coulson asked calmly. He gave off an air of bland normality, a face that could blend into any white American background. There was nothing in his manner that betrayed his military background in black-ops or intelligence gathering that Nick Fury had explained over the phone.

"And he seems to think that I need a new pet project," Peggy said, leaning back in her chair.

The man's expression didn't change. "I'm afraid I don't understand," he said.

Peggy rolled her eyes. "What did Nick tell you when he sent you out to Hawaii?"

Agent Coulson reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. "I was sent to give you this," he said.

Peggy took the envelope and turned it over. There was no name on the envelope. Slipping a fingernail under the flap on the back, Peggy ripped it open and pulled out the letter inside.

It was from Howard.

> _June 21, 1988_
> 
> Peggy,
> 
> I've asked SHIELD to make sure this gets delivered to you if I die before you do. Who knows, maybe you've got a similar letter tucked away for me. I'm not sure I want to find out.
> 
> I don't want this to turn emotional, so here's why I'm writing this: You're the only person who understands what's really happening out there. I know there have been attempts on my life, on Maria's life, because of what I do for SHIELD and with Stark Industries. When I'm dead, Peggs, I need you to look after Maria and Tony, to protect them both—

Peggy put the letter down on the table and clenched her hand tight in her lap, and breathed in and out until she could push down the wave of grief that threatened to overcome her.

> \--to protect them both. They're the best things I've ever done, you know that. I may not have been a great father, but Tony's going to do such amazing things, I know it. And I know I don't need to ask you to watch out for Maria.
> 
> I'm not sure if I ever thanked you for introducing me to Maria all those years ago. You've always know what I need before I do, and Maria was exactly that.
> 
> Sarah's turned into a fine young woman, even if she seems to have inherited your temper. I know I've never said it, God knows I don't have any right to it, but I'm proud of her and what she's done with her life. She doesn't need anything from me, I know that, but if you think it would be wise, please tell her that.
> 
> And lastly, Peggs, I want to say that I'm not sorry I died first. It's selfish, but I don't know how I'd make it without you. You keep saying that I didn't love you, but I do. Always have, in some way or another. And considering that it's been nearly fifty years since I met you, that has to count for something, right?
> 
> Don't be sad, although I expect you won't be, much. Be angry if you want; I know I would be if you died first. And hell, if someone killed me, please feel free to retaliate with my expression permission. I can rest a bit easier knowing that you'll be my avenging angel after my death.
> 
> I love you, Peggy Carter. Keep my family safe.
> 
> Howard

There was another sheet at the back, in a different ink, written just a month before Howard and Maria had died.

> _Nov. 19, 1991_
> 
> Peggy,
> 
> All the rest of this still stands, but another request. I haven't heard anything about it in years, but keep an eye on the Tesseract. As far as I know, the project is still in mothballs, but you more than anyone understand that the Tesseract is still a danger, even after all this time. I worry that one day, something bad will happen, and some Director will make the decision that the Tesseract is the lesser evil. You and I both know that would be a very bad idea indeed.
> 
> I don't know why this is coming to me now, but I can't shake the feeling that one day, that thing is going to come back to haunt us.
> 
> Some days, I wish I'd never found it.
> 
> Howard

Peggy folded the letters back together and placed them on the tabletop. Her hand was shaking and she wasn't sure she cared if anyone saw.

"Can I get you some tea?" Agent Coulson asked after a minute. She didn't reply, and he got to his feet to go over to the waitress.

Peggy tapped her fingers against the letter, wondering when Howard would stop upending her world. He'd been arrogant, confident, brilliant and impossible, and Peggy wished she didn't miss him so very much.

She'd unpack the rest of the baggage in the letter at a later time, when she was alone and drunk and didn't feel so horribly abandoned.

After a few minutes, Agent Coulson returned with a pot of tea and a mug. Peggy sat watching him as he poured out the tea, arranged the cup on the saucer, and pushed it across the table.

"Is there anything else?" Coulson asked.

Peggy raised her eyebrow at him. "Sit down and stop managing me," she said.

Obediently, Coulson sat.

With a sigh, Peggy reached for the cup of tea. "Look, this will go a lot easier for both of us if you unclench. This isn't a performance evaluation."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Stop calling me ma'am. You stick out like a sore thumb. Didn't anyone ever teach you how to go unnoticed?"

Coulson's face relaxed, the closest he'd yet come to a smile. "No one notices me when I don't want them to. I have a knack."

Peggy took another sip of the scalding tea. "Knack or not, Agent, I dislike people calling me ma'am. Something to keep in mind if we'll be working together."

"And will we?" Coulson asked, sounding bored by it all. "Be working together."

Peggy rested her elbows on the table and looked Coulson in the eye. "Do you know what it is that I do?"

"I've heard rumors," Coulson said with extreme caution.

"Don't believe anything other people tell you," Peggy said. "On occasion, I get thrown onto special projects. Nick understands that there are times when I need an assistant in order to keep things manageable, as it were."

"And that's why I'm here?" Coulson asked. "To manage things?"

Peggy heard the faint hint of distaste in his voice. So there were flaws in his facade, after all. "You're here because you're a junior in the firm and need more experience in the field."

"I have plenty of experience."

Peggy narrowed her eyes at him. "More _relevant_ experience," she said icily. "Your time in the mailroom doesn't count." Pouring herself another cup of tea, she looked at Coulson expectantly. "Nick said he sent you with a list of projects that need review."

"Yes, ma-- Miss Carter." Coulson folded his hands on the table and looked expectant. "The first project was file number 5483-A3BX," he recited from memory.

The case had been wrapped up in 1987; three dead cocaine dealers found in a hotel room in Cleveland with enough explosives to blow a crater in the city's centre. Peggy had located the rival gang, got the details of their foreign backers, and shut the operation down in under a month. "An accounting problem," Peggy explained, already bored. "Uninteresting then as well as now. Next."

"2976-E9WT," Coulson said.

A Soviet physician with details of the medical procedures used to biologically enhance KGB operatives had defected to the United States. He'd been found in a locked room with his throat slit and no one could figure out how it had happened. The case ended with the discovery of a double agent inside of SHIELD; Peggy still remembered the look of surprise on that man's face when she put a bullet between his eyes.

"Personnel issue," Peggy said shortly. "I believe that Human Resources was involved in that one."

"4320-J6MW."

Peggy wondered if Nick had put any effort into these files at all, or if he was just humoring her. "An underwater training program for sharks with laser beams attached. Moving on."

Coulson's eyebrows went up, obviously wondering what that was a euphemism for, but Peggy was being dead serious.

"Is that everything? Because if is, you can feel free to fly back to wherever you—"

"There is one more file," Coulson interrupted.

"What's the file name?" Peggy asked as she put her empty cup back in its saucer. The adrenaline from the temporary distractions, first the Black Widow and then this junior agent with the unmemorable face, was fading, and Peggy's whole body ached with the remembrance of loss. She wanted to take Howard's letter, go back to her hotel room, and lie on the bed in the darkness for a while.

"There is no file name."

An electric thrill ran down Peggy's spine, instantly pushing all other thoughts in her head aside. There was only one file at SHIELD with no name or number. The information was as invisible and intangible as the subject of the file itself, and Peggy had worked hard to keep it that way.

Very carefully, Peggy released the handle of her teacup and leaned back in her chair. Her hands were not shaking now. "What do you know about that particular file?" she asked. Her breathing was even, not betraying the steady racing of her heart.

"Nothing, Miss Carter," Coulson said. He watched her, obviously aware that something had happened, but clueless as to what. "Just that there's been a bit of activity on that file in the last few days. Would that be the sort of project you'd be interested in reviving?"

Peggy automatically scanned the restaurant, wondering if, even so close to the collapse of the Soviet Union, enemy agents might be about. It was a thought that hadn't occurred to her in many days. "It's best if you return to company headquarters," Peggy said, rising. "I'll join you there within the week."

Coulson also rose. "Is there anything you want me to do in the meantime?" he asked.

Peggy picked up Howard's letter from the tabletop and slid it into her pocket. "Just one thing," she said. "Tell Nick that was very well done indeed."

She turned and walked out of the restaurant. She had a game plan now – go back to her hotel room, pack her belongings, divert to a safe house and leave the Island covertly in a day or so, once Coulson was gone.

Howard and Maria… well. They were dead and nothing would change that. She would mourn them, but not now, not here. She would put her grief into a box in her mind and leave it there to fester, until the project was done and it was safe for Peggy to allow distractions such as grief or emotion back into her life.

She really had to hand it to Nick Fury. She'd told him to leave her alone, and he in turn sent her the one thing he knew was guaranteed to pull her back into the world of SHIELD.

The Winter Soldier was back.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even the most seasoned SHIELD agent sometimes runs up against the problems of Real Life. And if Sarah's not going to ask Peggy for help, someone else is...

January was growing stale when Phil Coulson hauled Peggy out of the mountain of Yugoslavian intelligence with the words, "You have a message, Agent Carter."

Peggy lifted her head from her hand and blinked at him. "Why wasn't it patched through?" she asked irritably. She hadn't slept in two days; hadn't slept much at all since she'd returned from Hawaii, working on uncovering anything she could about the Winter Soldier. All the dithering from the agents on her team was wearing on her nerves.

Coulson folded his hands together, standing at near-attention. "The individual didn't want to bother you," he said.

Peggy gave Coulson a glare as she picked up the phone and dialled into SHIELD's answering service.

"Miss Carter, my name is Luke Alvarez and I'm a friend of Sarah's," the recorded voice said. "She's fine, I guess, but we're all a little worried about her. She's been acting weird since she got back from New York and I wondered if something happened to upset her. She's skipping classes and she won't talk to anyone. If it was just me she was avoiding, I'd take the hint, but she's not talking to any of her friends, not Sally or Aramina or anyone." He took deep breath, and continued. "She's skipping labs, she never skips labs, and she knows how hard exams are going to be this year. Something's wrong and I thought maybe you could call her and see what's wrong with her and maybe help her, I don't know. She talks about you all the time and I know that you're important to her. Maybe you could make sure she's okay." A pause. "I guess that's all. Thanks."

Thoughtfully, Peggy replaced the receiver. She glanced up at Coulson. "Do we have a file on—"

"Lucas Alvarez?" Coulson said smoothly. He handed Peggy a thin folder.

Peggy had made SHIELD run security checks on all of Sarah's friends since the girl went away to college, just to make sure she was safe. With a father who made most of the weapons in the Western hemisphere, and mother who spent far too much time embedded in international espionage, Sarah was a logical target.

The personal profile of Luke Alvarez was unremarkable. A boy two years older than Sarah in medical school at Stanford where Sarah also attended, his family was from a small town in northern California. Comprised mainly of merchants and teachers, there were no known attachments to any overseas groups. Lucas' record was spotless, not even a speeding ticket.

And Sarah had not mentioned him once to Peggy.

According to the file, Lucas Alvarez had become part of Sarah's circle three years previous. There was nothing to make Peggy think that any of this was tied to the recent whispers of the Winter Soldier.

But Peggy hadn't lived so long by assuming that all was as it appeared.

"Coulson," she said. The agent waited expectantly. "Run a deep background check on this man. Check if he might have any connection to our current target."

"Do you expect he will?" Coulson asked as he took the dossier from Peggy.

"No." Peggy holstered her gun before reaching for her briefcase. "But I'm not going to risk it." She faced Coulson. "I have to go to California. I should be back tomorrow. In the meantime, continue with the analysis of the data we currently have. I expect that I'll have to get the real story on the ground, however."

"Would you like me to book you a flight to Europe for when you get back from California?" Coulson asked, taking the orders in stride.

"No," Peggy said. "I'll do it myself." She headed towards the door. "Can you get the Personnel department to reactivate Maggie Jenkins?"

"How deep a cover do you think you'll need?"

Peggy turned in the doorway. "I'm going after the Winter Soldier, Agent Coulson. How deep do you think I'll need to go?"

After working with Peggy for three weeks, Coulson had learned enough when to stop asking stupid questions. He kept his mouth shut.

* * *

Twilight was falling in Palo Alto when Peggy knocked on Sarah's apartment door.

Nothing.

Peggy tried to keep her anxiety in check. Perhaps Sarah was out running an errand. But if Luke Alvarez was to be believed, Sarah hadn't gone anywhere in the weeks since Howard and Maria's funeral.

Peggy scanned the area. The door did not appear to be forced; no scratches on the metal plating where someone might have tried to pick the lock.

Peggy pulled her gun and knocked again. "Sarah, honey, it's me," she called, stepping to the side of door in case anyone armed was in the apartment. And she waited.

After a minute, small scuffing sounds within the apartment came towards the door. "Mama Peggy?" Sarah asked.

"I'm here, love," Peggy said, taking her first real breath since Luke's phone call. "Can you let me in?"

The sound of a chain sliding off the latch, then one deadbolt flipped, then another. The door opened and Sarah peered out into the hallway. The girl looked like hell; dark circles under her eyes and cheeks pale. Her hair was limp around her face and she still wore faded pajamas so late in the day.

Sarah's eyes went wide at the sight of the gun. "What's wrong?" she asked in a scared whisper.

"You tell me," Peggy said as she holstered the gun. "Are you all right?"

"I guess," Sarah said as Peggy pushed her way into the apartment. "Why are you here?"

Peggy looked around. Books lay in untidy piles, dirty dishes heaped in the sink. A nest of blankets on the sofa gave Peggy a good idea where Sarah had been sleeping.

Turning, Peggy held her arms out to Sarah. Sarah stepped into the hug, pressing her face against Peggy's neck, and then without warning the girl began to cry.

These were not the sobs from Howard and Maria's funeral; this time Sarah cried slow and quiet, as if her heart was broken.

Feeling helpless, Peggy patted Sarah's back and whispered soothing words. After a few minutes, Peggy guided her over to the sofa and settled her into nest of blankets.

Sarah pulled a handful of tissues out of the nearly empty box to wipe her eyes. Peggy sat beside her, one hand on her back. Something was wrong, and if someone had hurt her daughter Peggy was going to find that person (Luke Alvarez stood out as a strong candidate at the moment) and kill him.

It took Sarah a few minutes to calm down. While she was pulling herself back together, Peggy looked around the room. The coffee table was strewn with video tapes and boxes of saltine crackers. More books lay on the floor, beside a photo album Peggy recognized. Maria had put that album together chronicling all the times Peggy and Sarah had visited the Starks in New York. Sarah must have taken it with her when she left New York after the funeral.

With a final sniffle, Sarah sat back on the sofa, leaning against Peggy. "Sorry," she said in a small voice.

"Whatever for?" Peggy asked. She kissed Sarah's temple. "You don't ever need to say you're sorry to me."

"I said some horrible things to you in New York," Sarah said. "I was missing Maria and Howard too, and when you got into that fight with Tony I just got so angry with you."

"It wasn't that bad," Peggy said. "And I likely deserved it." She reached up to stroke Sarah's hair. "Now, love, why are you hiding in here like this?"

Sarah shrugged. "Why are you here?" she countered.

"I got a phone call from a young Mr. Alvarez," Peggy said. She watched closely for any negative reaction at the name. Sarah pulled back and frowned.

"Wait, Luke called you? What for?"

"He said that you're missing classes and he's worried about you."

Sarah stood up, crossing her arms over her chest in agitation. "I gave him that number last year in case something bad happened to me and he couldn't reach Mom and Dad. Why did he call _you_?"

Peggy got to her feet, took Sarah's hands in hers and held them tight. Sarah's fingers were ice-cold. "Sarah, did something happen to you?" Peggy asked. "Are you hurt?"

Sarah stared at her. "No, Mama, I'm fine. Really. Like, nothing happened to me or anything, there's just... you know, like stuff happening."

The icy ball of fear in Peggy's stomach began to dissolve. "Then why are you hiding in the dark?"

"I'm not hiding," Sarah objected. She pulled her hands away from Peggy and walked aimlessly across the apartment. "I'm just not up for company these days."

"Mr. Alvarez said you've missed lab classes as well."

Sarah let out an annoyed sound. "I missed _two_ classes because I was at the doctor's, and one lab. I made up the work. Who the hell does Luke think he is, calling you about that?"

"I don't know," Peggy said. "Who does he think he is?"

Sarah stopped by the bookcase, running her fingers along the line of worn books. It took her a minute, but she finally said, "He thinks he's my boyfriend."

"And is he correct in this assumption?" Peggy asked.

Another long pause. "Yeah, he is."

That explained the phone call to Peggy. "Do you love him?"

"Does it matter anymore?" Sarah snapped, wiping her eyes with her shirt sleeve.

Peggy waited, then asked, "Did he do something that's making you avoid him?"

Sarah picked up a small box from the bookshelf and carried it back to the sofa. Curling up in the blankets, she said, "I stayed in New York long enough for the reading of Maria and Howard's wills."

Peggy hadn't considered anything to do with the estates; she'd been so determined to get out of New York that she hadn't thought about what Tony would have to go through after the funerals. "It's good that you were there to support your brother," Peggy said.

"I don't think he'd have gone if it was just him and Obadiah," Sarah said. "But the lawyer wanted to do it the day after the funeral, and there were some questions circulating about ownership of Stark Industries that were affecting the stock price so they wanted to hurry things along."

"What happened?"

"Howard's will was what everyone expected," Sarah said. "Some small amounts to the help. Tony got everything else. The company, the property, all of the money. He even got the patents, which I think made Obadiah a little angry."

"Did Howard leave you anything?" Peggy asked.

"Nope," Sarah said with false brightness. "I wouldn't want it if he did."

Peggy rubbed her hand over her eyes. "Sarah, he may not have acted like it, but he was your father—"

"I don't want a cent from him," Sarah interrupted. "He didn't owe me anything. I told Tony as much when he tried to cut me a check for half a million dollars."

"Why on earth did would your brother do that?" Peggy demanded.

"Tony was, like, really angry the whole time," Sarah said. "He tried to give me everything at first, saying I was the oldest and he didn't want anything to do with Howard's company or money, and the lawyer got all weird and was trying to explain to Tony that the will was valid and everything." She tapped her fingernails against the small wooden box. "Like, the lawyer was trying to get around saying that I wasn't entitled to anything because I was illegitimate, but Tony finally figured it out and lost it. Said the man was a heartless son of a bitch."

"The lawyer?" Peggy asked. That was a bit dramatic, even for Tony's over-the-top way of speaking.

"No, he was talking about Howard." Sarah took a deep breath. "I didn't take Tony's money." She looked at Peggy. "But there was something in Maria's will."

"What was that?" Peggy asked. She knew Maria had money in her own right, from her parents and from various investments of her own. But Peggy would have thought that Maria would leave everything to Tony.

Sarah opened the box and pulled out a ring. "She left me her engagement ring."

Peggy took the ring from Sarah. Maria hadn't been wearing it on the day of the crash, only ever wore the ring on special occasions. Sometimes, she wore the ring when she had dinner with Peggy and Howard, the three diamonds in the golden band glinting on her hand in the candlelight. "I was with Howard when he picked this out," Peggy said. She couldn't help a smile of remembrance. "That was when he still thought Maria would change her mind and call off the wedding."

"Would she have?" Sarah asked.

"Heavens, no." Peggy turned the ring over, the facets of the diamonds catching the light. "She was head over heels in love with him from the first day. But Howard was panicking and to calm him down I took him to a jewellery store after I was finished classes for the day."

The memory came back so clearly, Peggy could almost smell the smoke from Howard's cigarette as the store owner put trays of expensive engagement rings before them.

"And like all men with too much money, Howard completely lost his head and was going to pick something grotesque and worth more than a small Latin American country." Peggy gave the ring back to Sarah. "I told him to give his head a shake and think about what Maria would want. He said, what was the point of having money if he didn't buy an expensive ring, and I told him that if he really thought that Maria was marrying him for his money he should call off the wedding that minute. And then he got her this."

"It's really nice," Sarah said, her voice hitching as she slid the ring onto her baby finger. "When I was a kid and I stayed with them, Maria used to let me play with her jewellery. I'd put this on and pretend I was a princess."

Peggy put her arm around Sarah's shoulders and waited.

"And, um, Maria left me some money," Sarah continued. She wouldn't look at Peggy. "It wasn't a lot, but some, and I think it's because…" She took a deep breath." Because I told her something when we were in New York before Christmas," Sarah said, and the tears started flowing again. "And I think she just wanted to make sure I was okay, you know?"

"Sarah."

"I'm pregnant," the girl blurted out. She pulled the blanket tight to her chest. "And I'm going to graduate before the baby's due and I can find a job and everything but I don't know what I'm going to _do_."

The world rearranged itself while Peggy took in the fact that her little girl was having a baby. Sarah was barely twenty-two, still a child herself. Never mind that Peggy herself had been fighting a war at twenty-two, that had been a different time.

Peggy pushed her misgivings away. "Do you want this baby?" she asked. Sarah gave a small nod, tearing up again. "Does the father know?"

"No, I haven't told Luke yet," Sarah said. She rubbed angrily at her eyes. "And I can't stop crying and I hate it!"

"Hush," Peggy said. "That's normal." She pulled the blanket around Sarah's shoulders. "Let's be practical about this." She moved to sit on the coffee table so she could look at Sarah. "How far along are you?"

"Four months."

Peggy's eyes went wide in surprise. "When did you find out?"

"Just before we went to New York in November," Sarah said. "I only told Maria because she was helping me try on dresses for the winter formal and she didn't understand why I didn't want to get one that was too tight. She was so excited for me. That was why she left me the money in her will, it was for the baby in case… well, you know."

Peggy resisted the urge to ask why Sarah had told Maria and not her; there was no point in that jealousy of the dead. "How close are you to the father?"

Sarah pulled her hand free to stare at Maria's ring. "We've been dating for, like, two years? We started talking about maybe moving in together when I graduate in the spring."

"Do you want to marry him?"

Sarah gave Peggy a dark look. "Yeah, that'd go over great now. What would I say? Hey, you knocked me up, want to get married?"

"It's to the point," Peggy said. "And that wasn't what I asked."

"Get married because I'm having a baby? That's kind of rich coming from you, isn't it?"

Peggy held in a sigh. "Darling, you father was already married when I got pregnant with you. It wasn't possible."

"But if it was, would you have done?" Sarah persisted. "If Howard hadn't been married to Maria when you got pregnant, would you and him got married?"

Peggy let out a breath. "Honestly? I have no idea. I never thought about it."

Sarah twisted the ring around on her finger. "What if I tell Luke and he runs away?" she asked.

"Better he do it now than after the child's born," Peggy said. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to take a shower and I'm going to make this place fit for human habitation, and then we'll figure things out from there, okay?"

Sarah nodded. Slowly, she stood up, and pressed one hand against her stomach. "Do, um… do you want to see?" she asked.

"How high you're carrying the baby?" Peggy asked. "When I was pregnant with you I could wear my normal clothes until the fifth month, then everything just fell apart."

Sarah smiled faintly as she lifted her shirt. The swell of her belly was visible now, and Peggy had no doubt that Sarah would start to show in regular clothes soon.

"I was thinking what I'd do if Luke bails on me… well, on us," Sarah said, pulling her shirt down and pressing her hands against her stomach. "If you managed as a single mother in 1969, I can do pull it off in 1992, right?"

"Oh yes, we did fine until I packed you up in a basket and dropped you on my brother's doorstep," Peggy said dryly.

Sarah wrinkled her nose. "I don't think it would be the best idea to let Tony raise this baby," she said as she turned toward the bathroom.

Peggy sighed as she straightened the blankets on the sofa. "It would be a great way to say 'fuck you' to Howard, though," she muttered to the empty room.

She put the books against the bookshelf, loaded the dishwasher and stacked up the video tapes. Most of the room was squared away by the time Sarah turned off the shower. Peggy was piling dirty laundry into the hamper when Sarah emerged from her bedroom, hair hanging in wet ringlets around her shoulders. "Feel better?" Peggy asked.

"A little." Sarah leaned against the doorframe and watched Peggy move about the apartment. "I think I'm going to call Luke and tell him about the baby. And if he freaks out, well, maybe I'll go to New York and move in with Tony and have the baby out there."

"I don't think that would work," Peggy said.

"Sure it would, I saw it in a sitcom once," Sarah retorted. She crossed her arms over her chest, going into battle mode. "You know, Mama, I was thinking about why you came all the way out here instead of just calling me."

"I was worried about you," Peggy said, concentrating on turning a sock the right way out before tossing it into the hamper.

"They're sending you off to work again, aren't they? Sarah asked. "How dangerous is it?"

Peggy put the hamper on the kitchen table, wondering if Sarah had any change for the laundry machines in the basement. "It's classified."

"Does that mean they won't tell me if you die?"

Peggy went for her purse, knowing she had some quarters. "It likely won't come to that."

She was startled when Sarah pulled the purse out of her hands. "So don't do it," Sarah said fiercely, her dark eyes flashing. "Send someone else."

"I can't," Peggy told her.

"You think I can lose you too?" Sarah demanded. "After what happened to Maria and Howard? You think that was some kind of awesome test-run of my parents dying?"

"Sarah, this isn't the kind of job someone else can do."

"Who are you going after?"

Peggy took Sarah's hands in hers, wishing she could just lie, pretend everything was going to be all right. "Someone I've been chasing for nearly fifty years," she said quietly. "I'm the only one who can do this, love."

 "It's that important to you," Sarah said, not really a question.

"Yes."

Sarah pushed her hair back from her face. "Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?"

Peggy tapped the end of Sarah's nose, making her smile. If there had been any other option, anyone else Peggy could trust with this mission, she'd have done so; anything to stay with her daughter and soon-to-be-grandchild.

But someone had to go after the Winter Soldier, had to stop him no matter the cost.

"Do you want some dinner?" Peggy asked. "I can make something up after I do this laundry."

Sarah shook her head. "I should call Luke first. This baby isn't getting any younger."

Peggy picked up the hamper and left the apartment, giving Sarah some privacy to make her phone call. The laundry room was empty and Peggy was soon on her way back to the apartment. She found Sarah sitting at the kitchen table, chin in her hands.

"Went that well, did it?"

Sarah glowered at Peggy. "I wasn't expecting anything else," she muttered. "He said he needed some time to think. Doesn't matter."

In the dim light, Sarah's hair wild around her face, Peggy was struck anew by her daughter's resemblance to Howard. The brooding expression, the grim determination, all of it was Howard. And that was why Peggy knew Sarah would succeed at whatever she set her mind to, because in that Sarah was just like Howard.

Peggy also knew her daughter well enough to know the comparison would not be appreciated.

With a final glower, Sarah pushed herself to her feet. "I've got a frozen pizza, if you want it."

Peggy let Sarah putter around the kitchen. She needed to remember this moment, in which her daughter was alive and healthy. Peggy would do anything to protect Sarah, and right now that meant leaving everything behind and chasing after ghosts.

The doorbell rang. Seeing the defiant set of Sarah's shoulders, Peggy said, "I can get it."

"No, I'll get it," Sarah said, pushing off the counter. She went over to the door, opened it, and looked out into the hallway. There was moment of silence, then Sarah said, "What are you doing?"

"I think I'm proposing," came a male voice. "Down on one knee, ring in hand, right?"

"Did you get that from a vending machine?" Sarah demanded. Peggy edged around the kitchen table to better see the doorway. A handsome young man was on his knee in the hallway, holding up a bright pink plastic egg.

"Give me a break, the bodega was the only thing open at this time of night," the man said. He offered the plastic egg up to Sarah. "So, Sarah Carter, will you have my baby and marry me and move in with me? Maybe not in that order?"

 Sarah made a strangled sound in her throat. "Oh, get _up,_ you idiot!" She pulled the young man to his feet and hauled him into the apartment. "What is wrong with you?"

"There is nothing wrong with me!" the man protested, shaking his jacket straight. "That's the way it's supposed to go, right? Your girl gets knocked up, you get married."

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not your fucking obligation, Luke!" she exclaimed. "If you want to marry me, if you want to be part of my life, then _be_ it. But if you're here because it's what you think you're supposed to do, then just leave, now!"

 Luke didn't move.

Sarah started to tremble. "Just, walk out that door," she said, waving her hand at the doorway. "Go."

Carefully, gently, Luke stepped forward. He took Sarah's outstretched hand in his, kissed her palm. "I'm never going to do that," he said, his voice low and fierce. "I'm never leaving you again, do you understand?"

Tears spilled down Sarah's cheeks as she nodded. "But that's going to make going to the bathroom kind of awkward," she said, and Luke laughed and swept her up in his arms and whirled her around the room.

Then Luke caught sight of Peggy leaning against the kitchen counter and nearly dropped Sarah in his surprise.

Peggy could take a hint. "I'm going to leave you two alone," she said. "It looks like you need some time to get things sorted."

"Okay?" Luke looked between Sarah and Peggy. "Who are you?"

"Luke," Sarah said, pulling herself out of his embrace, "This is Peggy."

Luke's eyes went wide. "Ma'am," he said, straightening up. "I'd thought you'd be older—" Sarah's elbow caught him in the rubs. "I mean, well, hello."

Peggy managed to keep from rolling her eyes. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Alvarez," she said. "Sarah, I'll call you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Sarah said, letting Peggy give her a goodbye hug. "Be careful, Mama," she whispered in Peggy's ear.

"You too," Peggy whispered back. She kissed Sarah on the cheek and reluctantly let her daughter go. "One last thing."

Peggy took Sarah's hand and pulled Maria's engagement ring from her finger, then pressed  the ring into Luke's hand.

"If you're going to propose to someone, at least do it the right way," she suggested as she gave Sarah another kiss on the cheek. "Goodbye, darlings."

Sarah walked Peggy to the door. "No, seriously, be careful," Sarah told Peggy. "I really need you to come home, okay?"

"I'll do my best," was all Peggy could promise.  "Sarah… just don't do anything if you don't think it's the right thing for you, all right?"

"I won't," Sarah said. "And I want this, all right?"

"If you say so."

As Peggy walked down the hallway, she could hear Luke's voice through the still-open doorway, "Okay, seriously, that was your _mother_?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After decades, Peggy Carter has finally run the Winter Soldier to ground. The only problem is, two are playing the game of cat and mouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains scenes of violence and descriptions of gore.

A month later, Peggy was in Berlin. Two years after Reunification, the city was still in a state of flux and Peggy blended right in with the turbulence. Her contacts across Europe had directed her to Germany in pursuit of the Winter Soldier. No one had actually seen the man, and rumours were nearly non-existent, but there was something in the air that made Peggy's heart race. This time, she was on the right track.

She had no idea who she was looking for; no one did. No one had ever seen the Winter Soldier and lived to tell the tale. They only had vague hints of a tall man without eyes, without a face.

Some agents in SHIELD had wondered doubtfully in Peggy's hearing that it could be the same man, given that the Winter Soldier had been killing since the end of the War. But Peggy knew; it was him. There were ways of keeping a person alive, extending their life. With Peggy, it had been an unfortunate encounter with the Tesseract. She had no idea what happened to Natasha Romanova to keep the woman so ageless, but if one Soviet agent, why not another?

And then there were the strange gaps between the Winter Soldier's kills. Sometimes months but usually years would pass. The pattern to the killings was the same; cold, efficient, surgical in their precision. The Winter Soldier did not often cause collateral damage, but when he did, there was no brutality, just the swift delivery of death.

The Winter Soldier saved the brutality for those who deserved it. Peggy couldn't voice that sentiment to anyone in SHIELD except Nick Fury, but Nick was on an unrelated assignment in Hong Kong and Peggy only had the junior agents to handle on this one. Phil Coulson was somewhat useful, but she still didn't know his loyalties, didn't know where on the spectrum his taste for blood and vengeance lay.

In the meantime, Peggy sat in a cramped café over a cup of coffee, smoking her fourth cigarette, wondering what she should do next. Every faint whisper she'd gathered had indicated the Winter Soldier's next target was in Berlin.

She had a meeting scheduled later that evening with an informant of questionable morals and motives. The man had been a SHIELD informant for decades; had slipped Eastern bloc secrets in and out of Berlin with ease. He was quick and creative and Peggy was certain he'd been selling SHIELD secrets to the highest bidder on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But he'd never been enough of a threat for Peggy to do anything about him. In the Cold War, double agents were often the only kind that survived.

Peggy finished her coffee and paid the waitress with worn mark notes. The temperature outside hovered just below freezing, dirty snow sprinkling over the city. Peggy pulled her scarf around her neck and stepped out into the night. The streets were busy with people heading home out of the cold, and Peggy melted into the flow of humanity.

She wandered the streets for hours, making certain that she was not being followed, before making her way to her informant's flat. The building's outer door opened with a wheeze, letting Peggy into a cramped entrance hall. The lone light bulb burned dimly as Peggy walked down the corridor, her footsteps muffled by the faded carpet.

The building was so quiet, Peggy could hear her heart beating. The stairs to the first floor creaked under her feet as she climbed.  There was no one in the stairwell, no signs of life.

Peggy walked past the closed doors in the first floor hallway, ears straining to hear. The only thing she could make out was a soft drip, drip, coming from an open doorway halfway down the hall.

As she neared, the air grew thick with the stench of blood.

Peggy drew her pistol. The slow drip was the only sound in the entire building. She reached the open doorway, and looked inside.

It took her a moment for her brain to realise what she was seeing. The room was soaked in red, blood splattered on every surface. On the floor lay her informant.

He had been ripped apart.

Quickly, Peggy searched the rest of the apartment for anyone lying in wait. She tried to step between the pools of blood, but even so she left footsteps in the thick liquid on the floor.

Once she had determined there was no one hiding in the bedroom or the bathroom, Peggy looked around. Blood covered the furniture, the books, the desk, everything.

Everything except for a folded piece of paper pinned to the wall. On the front of the paper, written in black ink, was the letter **_M_**.

Peggy moved carefully across the room, and picked up the note.

Inside, in the same ink, was written a single number.

**_3_ **

A scrabbling against the wood, and Peggy whirled around her gun up. A rat had crawled out from behind the baseboard and was chewing on bloody strands of the dead man's intestines.

Peggy gagged, bile rising in her throat. She kept control of herself as she stumbled out of the room. The hallway carpet was clean in both directions; no one with bloodied shoes had come  this way.

Peggy stepped out of her boots, picking them up and running in her stocking feet down the stairs and out the back door. Ignoring the searing cold under her feet, she hurried down the alley. She ducked into an alcove to use snow and the ends of her scarf to wash blood off the soles of her shoes. She still had the note clenched tight in her hand.

With her boots back on and her gun in her pocket, Peggy walked out of the alley into the flow of Berlin nightlife. She breathed deep of the winter air, but was unable to get the stench of blood out of her head.

This could only be the work of the Winter Soldier. It took a long time to dismember a human body to such an  extent, and the blood had been so fresh, he could only have left only minutes before she arrived. But the man must have been covered in blood; if he had gone out the front or back door, he'd have left blood on the carpet and Peggy hadn't seen a drop of red anywhere. He couldn't have gone out by the window for the same reason, so how had he left the room?

Unless.

Peggy's steps slowed as realization washed over her.

Unless he hadn't left the room at all.

A stab of fear ran down Peggy's spine. She hadn't looked in the closet. The closet door had been open a crack and Peggy had been so focused on the dismembered body, she hadn't even considered that anyone might be hiding there.

The Winter Soldier had been in the room with her the entire time. Watching. Waiting.

Her informant was dead, torn limb from limb, and the Winter Soldier could be watching her right now.

Waiting.

Peggy did the only sensible thing. She ran.

* * *

Milan, three weeks later. Peggy stepped out of a taxi in front of the Pinacoteca di Brera. Midnight was close, but that suited Peggy's purpose. It was far better to meet this particular individual after the day's crowds had deserted the gallery.

The after-hours  security guard let Peggy into the building. She climbed the stone steps, the walls of the art gallery dark on either side of her. She had been here before to consult with the museum's foremost expert on art forgery. The man had crawled out from behind the Iron Curtain in the early eighties, and in exchange for his cooperation with SHEILD, Peggy had set him up in Italy with a cover story and some money.

She came to him from time to time, asking for help with certain commissions, not all of them strictly related to art forgery. The man was a natural-born criminal, and as long as he stayed on Peggy's side of the line, she looked the other way as to his other activities.

Normally, he'd meet her at the top of the stairs, but not this time.

The gallery was silent.

Peggy moved forward, the soles of her shoes falling softly on the marble floor. Shadows clung to the walls, thick and real. Peggy knew she should turn back, find someone to help her, to turn the lights on. Her mind screamed at her that she was alone in the dark, and that the dark was a living thing.

Peggy kept going.

She found her consultant dangling in front of a painting of the crucifixion, the rope around his neck suspended from the ceiling. His red hair didn't quite cover the empty bloody holes in his face where his eyes had once been. His body swayed in and out of the shadows.

A piece of paper lay on the floor at his feet. Peggy picked it up and when she saw the thick black **_M_** on the front, the darkness closed around her. She broke and ran back for the security desk. There was no escaping anonymously into the night on this one.

The polizia  questioned her all night. In the end, they seemed to believe the story that she was an art history student who'd been having an affair with the murdered art expert, that he'd arranged a special after-hours tour of the museum for her. They were already focusing their attention on the man's criminal connections, and let Peggy leave the station just as the sun was rising over Milan.

On the steps of the police station, Peggy reached into her pocket and pulled out the crumpled note. She opened it.

**_2_ **

* * *

She broke cover long enough to call SHIELD. She told the Director that she was going dark and hung up before he could demand she return to the States. She wasn't letting the mission go, not yet.

The closer the Winter Soldier got to her, the closer she got to him.

She chanced another phone call to Coulson, told him to double security on Sarah. Then she hung up the phone, left her Maggie Jenkins identity behind in the train station dustbin and boarded a train to Paris as Alice O'Brien, an Irish-born naturalized citizen of France.

The alias was the most comprehensive cover Peggy had ever created. Alice had a history as real as a living person, something Peggy had cultivated with painstaking care for nearly thirty years.

The train ride to Paris passed in a blur of adrenaline and paranoia. Peggy sat staring out the window and wondering what the hell she was going to do now.

She hadn't heard of any other killings in Europe, especially not with this distinctive signature. Why was the Winter Soldier only targeting Peggy's informants? Why did he wait until Peggy was so close?

And how, after all these years, was he still only a ghost in the night?

When the train pulled into Paris, Peggy disembarked with the rest of the throng. She joined the taxi queue and rode in silence to an unremarkable hotel. She paid for a room, carried her own bag upstairs, and closed the door behind her.

She spent the entire night sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the door with her gun in hand.

The Winter Soldier did not come for her that night. Nor the next, or the one after.

She slept during the day and sat up all night for weeks on end. She worked in the meantime, pouring over her dossier of the Winter Soldier.  In three weeks' time, Peggy was no closer to understanding the man than before she'd  left the States.

She began venturing out to museums and galleries, mostly to see if anyone was following her. Day after day, and no face repeated itself, no one seemed familiar.

April slid by, moving into the thick of May. Sarah's baby was due any day and Peggy ached to call home, but she couldn't risk it. The Winter Soldier was still out there, she could feel it.

More than once, she woke with her heart in her throat, thinking the Winter Soldier was standing in the dark by her bed, watching her sleep.

One night, 'Alice' ventured out to a night club to listen to some jazz, the one music form that modernity hadn't messed up. She left the club early enough that the Metro was still running, and she rode the train with other late-night merry makers.

She disembarked at her stop and walked across the underground platform. As the train sped out of the station, Peggy's senses went on alert.

There was no one around.

Even at one on the morning, there should have been _someone_. But the station was deserted; not a soul to be seen on the open platform.

Peggy was completely, utterly, achingly alone.

And then.

Something moved behind  her.

Peggy spun around. On the dirty platform, in a space that had been empty only moments before, sat a folded piece of paper.

On the front of the paper, written in black ink, was the letter **_M_**.

Peggy's vision swam for a moment. She walked over to the note, picked it up. All around her, the station was silent and deserted.

She opened the note.

**_1_ **

A soft scuffing behind her, and Peggy stopped breathing when something brushed her neck.

Peggy whirled around, pulling her knife from her pocket, but the man was too close and he grabbed her wrists, hauled her into a tight bear hug. His left hand clenched her arm with iron force, and with a sudden wrench of his fist, he snapped her arm like a twig.

Peggy's scream of pain was cut off as he slammed her down hard onto the platform. He was on her the next second, his hands closing around her throat. Peggy struggled to breathe, reaching for the black mask that covered the  man's face, but he just pushed her good arm to the ground and held it there with his knee as he strangled her.

Just before she lost consciousness, his hands left her throat and Peggy could breathe again. She coughed in mouthfuls of air, cradling her broken arm to her chest.

"Hello, Margaret," the man said.

Without bothering to get to his feet, the man reached over to pick up Peggy's knife from the platform. Peggy could see nothing behind the dark glasses hiding his eyes.

"I've been saving you for last, you know," he said, holding up the knife considering.  His voice was rough and low. "I've been looking forward to this for quite some time."

"Who are you?" Peggy choked out. If she could keep him talking, someone might come down the tunnel, or another train might arrive. She had to keep him talking; it was the only way she could survive.

"You know who I am," the man said. He spoke in English, his accent flatly American. "We've been doing this dance for so many years now, haven't we?"

"No idea what you're talking about," Peggy said. Her broken right arm was useless, but her left arm was fine. If she could just get some leverage, maybe she could take him by surprise.

The man flipped the knife over in his hand, once, twice. "You have to understand, Margaret, I'm only obeying orders."

"What's this, a serial killer with a moral code?" Peggy asked, eyeing the man carefully. His mask hid his features; he could have been anyone. "That's a new one."

He looked down at her. "I'm not a serial killer." He went down on one knee, grabbing her left arm and forcing her hand flat against the concrete. She kicked at him, but his grip was too strong and there was nothing Peggy could do as he raised the knife, then slammed the blade down through her hand and into the platform floor.

This time, there was nothing to stop Peggy's screams.

The man stood up, brushing his gloved hands on his trousers. "I'm a soldier, Margaret, just like you. And this is what we do." He pulled a gun from his pocket and shot Peggy three times in the chest.

Then he walked away.

Peggy felt the burning wetness of blood spreading out under her as she lay on the platform, staring up at the ceiling, unable to move.

Dying.

The far-away hiss-whine of the train approaching the platform was the last thing she heard for a very, very long time.


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

The world returned slowly.

At first, it was only in blurred streams of light, half-remembered in the darkness. Later, sounds and voices, muffled and incomprehensible.

Much, much later, Peggy opened her eyes.

She was in a white room, in a white bed, and she couldn't move.

Her chest hurt worse than anything she'd ever experienced before, like someone had cut her open and ripped her heart out of her body. Her right arm felt as if it were on fire, and her left hand...

Her hand felt as if it had been sliced clean off her arm.

With that thought, clarity returned. The Winter Soldier had come after her. He had attacked her.

_Where was he now?_

Peggy tried to move, tried to sit up. She had to escape her captors; had to run before the Winter Soldier found her.

But when she tried to move, she could not. She had a tube down her throat and her arms were strapped to the bed and the more she fought to escape, the tighter the bonds became.

Peggy tried to scream, but the tube in her throat blocked all sound and she couldn't breathe.

Then people rushed into the room and held her down and yelled incomprehensible words at her and one of them must have done something, for a wave of heat rushed into her arm and spread over her whole body and put her back into the darkness.

* * *

The next time Peggy woke up, the room was dark, and Nick Fury was sitting in a chair at the side of the bed. "Welcome back," he said. His face was in shadows.

Peggy licked her lips. The tube that had been down her throat was gone, and her throat felt raw. "What?" was all she managed.

"You've been in a coma for two weeks," Nick said. "The doctors were starting to think you weren't coming back, Margaret."

Peggy looked up at the ceiling, unable to take in Nick's meaning. She'd been on assignment, that much she knew. The Winter Soldier, it had been about the Winter Soldier... What had happened to the Winter Soldier?

In fits and starts, the memory of that night in the Paris subway came back to Peggy. The train pulling out of the station. The dirty floors of the platform. The note.

The knife.

Peggy twisted around, trying to see her left arm. She couldn't feel her hand, why couldn't she feel her hand?

"Easy," Nick cautioned, leaning forward. He lifted her left arm up, letting Peggy see that her arm had been strapped to a board. Her hand was bandaged in thick cotton, but under the gauze, it looked relatively whole.

Turning her head, Peggy saw that her right arm was in a cast. Her fingers were nearly as pale as the sheets.

"Do you want to sit up?" Nick asked. Peggy wasn't sure if she nodded, but Nick pressed the button on the hospital bed to lift the top half of the bed. "You know, Margaret, you're looking pretty good for someone who took two bullets to the heart."

The Winter Soldier had shot her in the chest, Peggy vaguely remembered. He'd stabbed her with her own knife, and shot her in the chest, then he walked away and left her to die.

"How?" she breathed. The word got stuck in her throat.

"How did you survive that?" Nick asked. He walked over to the side table and poured a glass of water. "How did we find you?"

He dropped a straw into the glass and held it up for Peggy. She took a long sip, then another, the water cold and harsh sliding down her throat. But oh, it was the best thing in the world.

After a few more sips, Peggy let go of the straw and let her head settle back onto the pillow, exhausted from that small effort. Nick set the cup down and pulled his chair closer to the bed. As he sat down, his face caught the light, and for the first time Peggy could see the swath of white bandages covering the left side of his face.

"Report, Agent Fury," Peggy said in a whisper.

Nick settled into the chair, staring at the heart monitor with his right eye. "Botha caught up with me in Hong Kong," he said shortly. "Seems he wasn't quite as willing to forgive and forget about Amsterdam as we thought."

Peggy's breathe hitched painfully in her throat. Botha was a high-level arms dealer, one of the biggest players in Africa, and a true psychopath. He'd never let the apartheid politics of his homeland stand in the way of supplying arms to everyone on the continent.

Nick had played the lead role in taking down Botha's European operations in late 1990. SHIELD had lost sight of Botha after that, with rumours that the man was staked out in south Asia.

"What did he do?"

Nick's hand tightened convulsively on the chair arm. His expression never changed. "You remember that thing people used to say about the rats?"

Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, trying to swallow down the wave of horrified nausea. They'd heard rumours about things Botha did with the rats to his victims, but it had all seemed too insane for credit.

"Your eye?" Peggy asked, looking at him once again.

"Too damaged to salvage when I got out," Nick said. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, lost in thought for a moment. "SHIELD evacuated me back to headquarters. I'd barely landed when they brought you in on a medical transport. That was two weeks ago."

Two weeks. Two weeks since the platform in Paris.

"Any sign of the Winter Soldier?" Peggy asked.

"Nothing we could find."

"What about the notes? Were there any fingerprints on the notes?"

Nick frowned. "What notes? The police didn't find any notes."

"No, there was a note..." Peggy searched her memory of the night of the attack. "He left a note on the platform, just like he did with the other two. Those notes were in the dossier in my hotel room, did they look in there?"

Nick sat forward. "Margaret, there was no dossier in your hotel room," he said. "Coulson flew to France and did a full clean up, of the hotel, of the safe house, everything. The dossier wasn't there."

Peggy's battered heart skipped a beat. That dossier had all the original information she'd ever complied on the Winter Soldier; every rumour, every hint, every scrap. Most of the information in it had been her own, things she'd never shared with SHIELD.

And now it was gone.

And there was only one person who could have taken it.

She tried to sit up again, bracing her right arm against the bed to push herself upright. She got halfway to a sitting position before stabbing pain shot through her chest and she nearly fell over.

"Easy," Nick exclaimed, springing to his feet. "Pretty sure that's a fantastic way to go back in for a second round of heart surgery."

"I have to go," Peggy said through gritted teeth. "He's out there, and he has the dossier, I have to go after him!"

"Who's out there?" Nick asked. He put his arm around Peggy's back and held her up, as she breathed around the pain in her chest and arms.

"The Winter Soldier," Peggy whispered. "Nick, it was him, I know it was him. I came so close, I can do it again—"

"Not in this condition," Nick pointed out. He put his hands on Peggy's shoulders. "Margaret, you're not going anywhere."

"You don't understand, I _saw_ him!" Peggy said. She clutched at Nick's sleeve with her right hand, ignoring the pain in her arm. "The Winter Soldier, Nick. He's real and I saw him and I have to keep going! I have to stop him!"

"Margaret!" Nick shouted. "You're not going anywhere." He let go of Peggy's shoulders and sat down. The look in his one good eye was intense. "Look, I don't know how to tell you this, but Stoner's shelved you. He said the clusterfuck around the attempt on your life and your obsession with the Winter Soldier file was proof that you're past your best-before date. You're out."

"What?" Peggy asked, too stunned for anything more intelligent. Director Stoner couldn't just do that to her; she'd been part of SHIELD since the beginning, even before that. The Director couldn't just take that away. Peggy had a mission to complete.

She had to stop the Winter Soldier. Now, more than ever. Why didn't Stoner understand that?

"If it's any consolation, you're not the only one," Nick said heavily. He put his hand on Peggy's arm. "He's got me on a one-way ticket out of here once I'm healed up. Can't say as I blame him; it's hard to see what's going on out there with only one eye."

"He can't do this," Peggy said, a deep anger stirring in her chest. "I haven't spent my whole life keeping this world safe only to have some bureaucrat ruin everything!"

"He's got the Board of Governors on his side," Nick pointed out. "If you have a card up your sleeve, now would be a great time to play it." He stood up. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I wasn't with you in Paris."

Peggy looked up at Nick. He was still in the prime of his youth; strong, tough. He was the brightest intelligence agent she'd worked with in over thirty years. She'd taught him everything she knew, and in the end, she hadn't been there for him when he'd needed her the most.

"And I'm sorry I wasn't with you in Hong Kong," she said quietly.

The corner of Nick's mouth twitched into a smile. "Maybe next time," he said. He picked up an envelope from the table by the door and dropped it on Peggy's lap. "Congratulations, by the way," he said as he swept out of the room.

Peggy frowned at the envelope. There was nothing written on the outside. With a bit of fumbling with her injured hands (and a few creative curses at the pain), she opened the envelope and out spilled a photograph, and a letter.

The photograph showed Peggy's daughter Sarah in a hospital bed, holding a tiny, squalling infant. Sarah was smiling like she'd been given the whole world.

 

> _Mama Peggy, I hope you're doing okay. I don't know when I'll see you again but in case you can get letters wherever you are, I'm sending this to you. I'd like to introduce you to Dylan Carter Alvarez, born three days ago. Luke took this photo while I was still high from the Demerol, so ignore me. I think Dylan looks like a monkey, but Luke thinks he's cute, so we're going to keep him._
> 
> _I don't know when you're coming home, so I'm going to try to take a lot of pictures for you to see when you are back. And when you get back, you have to come see your grandson, that's an order._
> 
> _Love you,_
> 
> _PS: Breastfeeding is SO WEIRD this wasn't in any of the books._

Peggy picked up the photograph and looked at it closer. Dylan looked rather like Sarah had as a newborn, all red skin and squeezed-tight eyes, his hand clenched into a tiny fist.

Her grandson. Howard's grandson. And he was tiny and helpless and Peggy knew she'd do anything to keep him safe.

In looking at that photograph, Peggy realized what she needed to do about Nick Fury and Director Stoner.

* * *

Two weeks later, Peggy stood at the door of Sarah's new house in Aberdeen, trying to gather her thoughts.

She'd been released from the SHIELD infirmary only the day before. The doctors had been set against her leaving, but the incisions on her chest from the emergency heart surgery had nearly healed. Her broken right arm had been set clean; they said the bones were knitting neatly. She'd have full use of the arm in another four weeks, the doctors had said.

Her left hand was another story.

But Peggy didn't want to think about that right now. She rang the doorbell, and somewhere in the house, a baby began to wail.

Peggy winced. Apparently Dylan liked the doorbell as much as Sarah had as a baby.

Thumping footsteps, then a voice on the other side of the door, "I swear to god, I am going to kill—" and then the front door swung open and it was Sarah, looking furious and exhausted and beautiful.

Sarah drew up short, visibly shocked. She started to smile, then she looked closer at Peggy and the expression faltered. Peggy wondered what Sarah saw; the dead-white pallor of her skin, the dark circles under her eyes, the cast on her right arm, the bandages wrapped around her left hand.

"Hello," Peggy said weakly as Sarah just stood there, eyes wide. "I got your letter."

Sarah put her hands over her mouth and Peggy couldn't take it any longer, just took a step inside the door and put her damaged arms around her daughter, holding her so tight it hurt.

"I missed you," Peggy whispered in Sarah's ear. "Are you all right?"

Sarah pulled back, ears filling her eyes. "I thought you were working, that's why you didn't write me back," she said as she touched Peggy's cast gently. "What _happened_?"

"It's a long story," Peggy said with a wry smile. Lord, was it ever. "But first, how about you introduce me to Dylan?"

Luke had come into the room, carrying the wailing baby on his shoulder. "Hey, Ms. Carter," he said. He spotted her injuries, and his eyes narrowed. "You okay?"

"Just fine," Peggy lied. She stepped forward as Sarah closed the door, right hand going up to brush the back of the sofa as she passed. In the weeks since she'd awoken from her coma, she had regained enough stamina to walk across a room without having to lean on anything; however, it had been a long walk from the taxi to the front door. "And who is this?"

Luke turned so Peggy could see the baby's face. Dylan was red-faced and letting out little unhappy cries, fists clenched tight as he tried to lift his head off his father's shoulder.

"I'm sorry the doorbell scared you," Peggy told the baby. He opened his eyes and looked at her with Sarah's dark brown eyes, and Peggy's damaged heart melted.

"Mama, this is Dylan," Sarah said. She took the baby from Luke and bounced him on her arm. The change in parent holding him momentarily disrupted the crying. "Do you want to hold him?"

Peggy wanted to say yes, but her right arm twinged under the cast and her left hand... Well, that was a disaster all of its own. "Perhaps I should sit down first."

She turned to go to the sofa and nearly came to grief as her knee buckled. Luke saved her an embarrassing tumble to the carpet, catching her elbow and helping her to the sofa. Grey swam in front of Peggy's vision for a moment or two. When everything cleared, Sarah was on the sofa beside her with the baby, and Luke was handing her a glass of water.

"Are you sure you should have been released from the hospital?" Luke asked worriedly. "You looked like you were going to faint for a minute."

Peggy took the water. "I don't faint," she told Luke before sipping at the water. "I pass out. And yes, I'm as fine as can be expected."

Sarah bounced Dylan on her arm. All the motion succeeded in doing was to make him cry harder. "What does that mean, expected?" Sarah demanded.

Once she was settled, Peggy held out her arms for the baby. Sarah deposited Dylan on Peggy's left arm. Leaning back, Peggy jiggled the boy around until he snuggled into the crook of her arm, his wails decreasing in severity. "It means," Peggy said in a calm voice, looking directly into Dylan's eyes, "That the doctors have decided that I'm no longer cleared to go into the field."

She brought her right hand up, resting the cast on Dylan's tummy. She tapped her fingers on his chest, noted the response in eye movement and the turn of his head. He was still fussing, but it was less frantic. In a few minutes, he might be calm enough to go back to sleep.

Sarah had been the same way as a newborn – any loud noise woke her to screaming, but she settled soon enough.

"What does that mean?" Sarah asked, pressing herself in along Peggy's side. "Are you on desk duty?"

Peggy caught Dylan's hand with her fingers, pressed his arm down across his chest. She had to stretch her fingers to catch his other hand, the motion aching all along her healing arm. "Not exactly."

Dylan wriggled against Peggy's hand, but with his hands no longer flailing everywhere, he began to calm down. Peggy spread her palm over his chest, feeling his little torso move as he breathed. "Mama Peggy, come on," Sarah said. "If you're not on desk duty, what? Are you on medical leave?"

Peggy finally looked up at her daughter. "Let's just say that I've been asked to step down from active duty."

Sarah's eyes went wide. "Did you get _fired_?"

The corner of Peggy's mouth twitched up, not quite a smile. "Not in so many words."

Sarah stared at her, aghast. "They can't just fire you because you got hurt! That's—well, that's wrong!"

Peggy held her tongue. It would have been wrong, had that been the real reason, but what had actually happened was that Peggy had called in every favour left to her in SHIELD, had bullied and harassed anyone with any clout in the intelligence community. She could have done so to resurrect her career after the disaster with the Winter Soldier, lord knew she knew where enough skeletons were buried, but she hadn't.

Instead, Peggy Carter used every last inch of her clout to shove Nicky Fury back into SHIELD, regardless of his injury. The world had changed since she was a young woman. The organization she had helped to build needed people like Nicky Fury, able to see ten steps ahead of anyone else and take the steps necessary to save the most people, to work towards the greater good.

She smiled down at Dylan, now blinking up at her with sleepy eyes. "It is what it is, love." Peggy leaned over to press a kiss against Dylan's head. He smelled so sweet, the tiny wisps of light brown baby hair on his scalp tickling her lips. "Let's just focus on what's important. How are you?"

Sarah sat back, throwing Lucas an incredulous glare. The young man inched forward to seat himself on the nearby coffee table. "Do you need any medical attention?" Lucas asked carefully.

"I have had quite enough of medical attention," Peggy told Lucas, distracted as the baby yawned so widely that his little tongue stuck out. "I simply popped in to see how Sarah was doing, and to meet this young man."

"How did you get him to quiet down?" Sarah demanded softly. "Whenever I try something when he's woken up, he just goes off."

"I had a year of experience with you," Peggy said. She rubbed the baby's belly as he made soft sucking noises. "You'd get so wound up and it took me a while to realize that you could tell how upset I was." The baby closes his eyes. "And I've had several years in staying calm in the face of adversity."

Peggy stared at the baby until he was fast asleep in her damaged arms, then Sarah took him back and rested him against her shoulder. "Can you show me how to do that?" Sarah whispered over Dylan's head.

"I can try," Peggy said. The expression of relief on her daughter's face almost distracted her from the pain in her hand. "Oh, darling, it's so good to see you again."

Sarah shifted so she was leaning against Peggy. "I didn't know if I was ever going to see you again," Sarah said. "Everything you said before you left, and then all that silence..."

"It was necessary," Peggy said, ruthlessly repressing a sudden flashback to the subway platform in Paris, the sharp pain as the Winter Soldier's knife slid through her left hand. "I didn't like being away, but I had no choice."

"And now that you're not on active duty anymore, does that mean you can stay?" Sarah asked.

Peggy glanced over at Lucas, who had been watching the exchange in silence. "Sarah, you have a newborn to take care of, you don't need me hanging around here," Peggy said.

"Where are you going to go?" Lucas asked. "I mean, I don't know what exactly happened to you, but it's going to be hard to manage alone with your hands like that."

"You can stay with us," Sarah added. "For a little while. As long as you show me how to get Dylan back to sleep."

Peggy looked at Lucas, then at Sarah. "You're serious."

"Damned serious." Sarah frowned theatrically. "There's a spare room around the back of the house we've been using to store stuff. Lucas can clean it out for you."

Peggy hesitated. Truth be told, the idea of being able to stay with Sarah, to spend time with her and the baby, sounded like heaven after the year Peggy had survived. And what did she have to go back to? She had burned her bridges with SHIELD. The Winter Soldier was no longer her problem, and even if he was, she was in no condition to go after him now. Not after what he had done.

Peggy kissed the top of Sarah's head. "I'll stay for a few days," she said. Sarah's face lit up with delight. "But only a few days. You need some family time."

"You told me Maria practically moved in with you after I was born, so don't tell me that," Sarah said, grinning. "I'll go put Dylan down and then get your stuff."

She kissed Peggy on the cheek as she stood, carrying the baby carefully as she ascended the stairs.

As soon as Sarah was out of sight, Peggy looked at Lucas, raising her eyebrow. He returned her gaze evenly. "Will you be all right with this?" she asked him.

Lucas nodded. "Sarah missed you at the wedding," he said, quietly so his voice wouldn't carry up the stairs. "Joshua and Ann were there to give Sarah away, but Sarah said it wasn't the same as if you and Maria had been there."

Peggy rubbed her eyes. Howard and Maria hadn't been dead a year yet, and sometimes the reminder of their deaths hurt worse than her physical injuries. "Maria would have loved to see Sarah get married," Peggy said. "As would I."

Lucas smiled faintly. "Don't worry, we've got pictures."

"Good." Peggy took a breath to steel herself, then stood up. She attained the upright without incident, waving off Lucas' offered hand. "I'm only going to stay for a few days, mind. To help you with the baby."

* * *

A few days turned into a few weeks. Dylan thrived with all the attention, and once Sarah got the hang of settling him down when he fussed, she practically glowed with contentment. Lucas looked far less stressed, but then Peggy didn't see much of him, as he was often in school or cleaning up while Sarah slept.

Every night, Peggy told herself she should make plans to leave soon – Sarah needed to get used to dealing with things on her own, and no matter how pleasant Lucas was to her, no young man would want his wife's mother hanging around all the time.

And then every morning, Peggy saw Dylan's face light up when he saw her, and her half-hearted resolve wavered for another day.

One day, Peggy overheard Sarah and Lucas arguing about money, while Peggy walked around the back yard with Dylan on her shoulder. Peggy only caught bits of the conversation, but Sarah seemed to be arguing they should use her inheritance from Maria to pay for Lucas' medical school tuition, while Sarah went back to work in order to pay for rent and childcare for Dylan.

Lucas' voice was quiet, and Peggy couldn't hear his responses, but he did not sound happy.

"What do you think?" Peggy asked Dylan, shifting him to her left side. The baby was almost able to hold up his head for a full minute now, and he looked at her with bright brown eyes. "Do you want a nanny? Some stranger to come poke at you and tell you to eat your vegetables?"

Dylan flopped onto her shoulder, nuzzling against her neck.

"I didn't think so," Peggy mused, rubbing his back with her right hand. Her arm had healed so well that the doctors said she would be able to remove the cast for good in the next few days. "Well, let's wait and see how long it takes your parents to figure out what they're going to do, shall we?"

The baby gurgled, then spat up all over her shoulder.

After handing Dylan off to his parents and changing into a new shirt, Peggy stared out the window of her borrowed bedroom at the small backyard. It had been over a month since the Winter Soldier attacked her in Paris. The scars over her heart were still red, where the surgeons had cut her open and laid bare her heart to save her life.

Peggy did not understand why she was alive. The Winter Soldier did not aim false, and he had been standing directly over her when he fired two bullets into her heart.

"Mama Peggy?"

Peggy turned around. Sarah stood in the doorway, her face resolute. "Yes?" Peggy said, hiding her amusement at Sarah's expression.

Sarah lifted her chin, so like Howard in this moment. "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

And so Peggy let Sarah ask the questions she already expected. Sarah would never ask for money directly, and Lucas would never let Sarah use Maria's money for his schooling; Peggy had seen the man's pride in these short weeks. But there was one thing Sarah would ask for, and that was help with the baby.

Peggy listened to Sarah's carefully arranged proposal; that since Sarah had to go back to work and Lucas had school, would Peggy be able to watch Dylan during the days, just for a little while until they sorted things out?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Please be advised that this chapter contains a sex scene with dubious consent issues - while the act is consensual, the main character is under a misapprehension as to the real identity of her partner.

* * *

_Fall, 1995_

Three years later, Peggy sat on a park bench watching Dylan tear across a playground, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The sun shone overhead, a rare treat in Washington State, with no clouds threatening a downpour. Dylan paid no mind, as he ran around and jumped and tried to climb on the playground equipment. The few other children in the playground were busy about their own play with their parents. Peggy would have offered to play with her grandson, but even at three years old he was determined to do things his own way. And right now, he was certain that he could play on his own.

Peggy had been taking care of Dylan for nearly three years; she knew he would eventually come across something he couldn't climb, some barrier he couldn't surmount, then he would call for her to help him.

Sarah was at work, Lucas on a rotation at the hospital in Olympia, and Peggy Carter, once one of SHIELD's best agents, sat on a park bench watching children play.

Her left hand lay half-curled on her lap. The Winter Soldier's knife had severed two tendons in Peggy's hand; by the time the surgeons had gotten around to it after fixing her heart on the operating table, the damage had been done. Her thumb and index finger worked, but the rest of her left hand was pretty much useless now. Perhaps it was best she had left the spy world; what good was a one-handed operative?

Across the playground, Dylan was jumping up, trying to grab hold of one of the monkey bars. Peggy watched him, idly wondering how long it would take him to give up and ask for help.

At least Nick Fury asked for help when he needed it. Peggy's last act at SHIELD, which installed Nick in the Director's chair, had meant her exit from the organization, but Nick still came around from time to time, asking the odd question, but that was it. Unlike the last time Peggy had been forced out of SHIELD, no one seemed much to want her back.

No one had heard a whisper of the Winter Soldier since Paris.

Her life was quiet now; watching Dylan during the days, going home to her own empty flat at night (she'd soon moved out of Sarah and Lucas' house; they all needed their own space) and getting up again to do it all over again the next day.

Maybe this was what getting old was like, Peggy mused as she rose from the bench. Not missing the fight, the adrenaline rush from saving the world. She was almost eighty now; maybe her forced retirement was for the best.

Across the playground, Dylan was rubbing his tummy, visibly frustrated with his inability to jump twice his height to grab the bars. Peggy slowly made her way over to the apparatus.

"Do you need any help?" she asked Dylan when she was at his side.

Dylan reached high in the air and made grabby-hands at the bars. "Can't reach!" he exclaimed.

"I can see that," Peggy agreed. "Do you want me to lift you up so you can reach?"

Dylan pulled his arms down. "No!" he shouted, and tried to jump again. Unsurprisingly, he fell short. This time, he rubbed his nose with his sleeve and walked over to Peggy, flinging himself against her leg.

She patted his head with her damaged left hand. "Do you want me to help you now?"

Dylan looked up at her, his brown eyes so much like his mother's as he nodded piteously. "Yes!"

"Yes what?"

"Yes, Mama Peggy!"

She shook her head. "Yes _please_ ," she told Dylan as she lifted him up to her hip. "We say please when people do nice things for us, like lifting us up to the bars."

"Yes please," Dylan parroted. He reached for the bars and held on tight, not minding as Peggy continued to hold him as he dangled from the bars. He held on for longer than Peggy would have thought, kicking his feet. Then he said, "Down _please_ ," and Peggy lowered him to the ground. Dylan wiped his hands on her jacket, then took hold of her left hand. "I'm thirsty."

"Are you, now," Peggy said, letting Dylan lead her away from the playground. "Are we going home now?"

"Yes!"

"And are you going to have something to drink?"

"Yes!"

"Then what?"

Dylan paused and looked up at her, his lower lip stuck out in concentration. "Ice cream?"

Peggy rolled her eyes. "Not ice cream," she said, lifting Dylan up to her hip. "Lunch first. Then nap time."

"No nap."

"I was talking about me," Peggy said, blowing a raspberry on his cheek until he screamed with laughter. "I'm old. I need my beauty sleep."

Dylan laughed all the way down the street, on the way back to Sarah's house. Once there, Peggy would make the boy lunch, make him take a nap, then stay with him until Sarah got home from work.

Then she would go home to her quiet house and wait until the day was over, to get up to do it all over again.

* * *

That night, after she'd left Sarah with Dylan for their dinner (Lucas was working until midnight), Peggy went home to her empty flat. She opened the door and turned off the security alarm without bothering to turn on the lights, then walked into the living room and sat on the couch in silence.

One more day was nearly over.

Peggy stared at the ceiling, so tired. Taking care of Dylan was wonderful, she told herself. She had a chance to be there for her grandson like she never had been for her daughter. That didn't make it up to Sarah, but maybe it was something.

It was just... sometimes, Peggy ached for her old life. Hunting down bad guys, saving people, making the world a better place, living on the edge.

But that old life had Howard in it, and Maria, and now they were dead. Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, grief slicing through her, as sharp as it had been on the day they died.

Whatever Peggy did, nothing could bring back Howard and Maria.

Peggy stood. No point in getting sentimental. She had lost much in her life. Steve Rogers, decades before; Howard and Maria; so many good men and women in the line of duty. She needed to remember the things she had not lost, the good things in her life, like Sarah and Dylan.

And she was still alive, for what it was worth.

Giving up on a quiet night at home, Peggy went into her bedroom. She quickly changed into a skirt and blouse, stepped into a pair of unremarkable black high-heels, and picked up a jacket on the way to the front door.

On those nights she was unable to stand the stillness, there was always the next best thing – the chaotic anonymity of a crowd.

There was a bar across town she frequented on occasion; specializing in good hamburgers and passable beer. Peggy slipped into a booth at the back of the bar and ordered her food, pulling out a book to pass the time.

Even half-empty, the bar hummed with noise. The televisions were on, showing some sporting event, while the usual group of young men hung around the pool table showing off for the girls. A few people hung around the bar, while some of the tables were occupied with people eating and drinking and watching the game.

Peggy sat by herself in the corner and read, and that was just what she wanted.

She had finished her dinner and was still nursing at her beer when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Putting her book down, Peggy looked up at the young man standing by her table. He smiled at her. "Can I buy you a drink?"

Peggy looked the man over. Tall, brown hair and blue eyes; a strong cleft chin with a hint of five o'clock shadow, holding a glass of beer in his right hand. He was a rather attractive man, one might even say handsome. "I already have a drink," she said, picking her book up once again. "Thank you for the offer."

He didn't appear put off. "How about if I joined you while you drank that drink of yours?" he asked, still smiling.

As he spoke, he shifted his weight, the left side of his body coming into Peggy's line of sight. His left sleeve was pinned up, doing nothing to disguise the fact that this man only had one arm.

Peggy looked back up at the man's face. His smile hadn't shifted, but she could see it had become slightly strained. She wondered how many girls had fallen for that pretty smile, only to have their interest turn to disgust when they saw his left side.

Well, Peggy had been around for a very long time, had lived through several wars, and a missing limb wasn't about to make her lose interest. It had been a very long time since Peggy had kept company with a handsome man. "All right," Peggy said, closing her book. "Join me."

The man's smile flashed to a grin, just for a moment, then he was sliding into the booth opposite Peggy. He set his glass down on the table and held out his hand to Peggy. "I'm Alexander."

"Margaret," Peggy said, clasping the man's hand firmly. His fingers were cool from holding the glass; calluses on his palm told of a man used to hard work. The feel of his hand against hers sent a shiver down her spine, his smile making her stomach flutter.

Well, she might be old, but she wasn't dead. This man was handsome, with broad shoulders and a trim waist, and he had a very pretty mouth.

"Do you live around here?" Peggy asked once she released the man's hand.

"I'm in town for work," he said. His voice was low and sure. She couldn't place his accent; American for sure, possibly West coast. "Just for a few days. How about you?"

"I live here."

"Ah," the man said. He gestured at her book. "What are you reading?"

They talked for a few minutes of the usual sort of thing one did on first meetings; literature and politics and things to do locally. All the while, Peggy wondered what was itching in the back of her memory, who this man reminded her of. She was certain she had not met him before; he could barely be thirty, and the twitch in her head was from long before he was born, back when Peggy was still very young indeed.

It must be the missing arm, she decided when the man laughed at some arch comment she made. His missing arm, his cocky smile, all spoke to her of a hundred soldiers she had met during the War, in bars rather like this one.

But that had been nearly two decades before this man could have been born.

Under the table, his foot brushed hers, and she relaxed against the back of the booth. It was highly unlikely that any of her former enemies would send a one-armed assassin after her. Indeed, after she had been attacked by the Winter Soldier in Paris, Nick Fury had made sure that Margaret Carter had disappeared from the map. None of her former enemies would think to look for her in a place as unremarkable as Aberdeen, Washington.

So she let this handsome man flirt with her, and she flirted back, because Howard and Maria had been dead for nearly four years and some days she was so alone that she could barely stand it.

* * *

She drove them to his motel room, a few blocks away from the bar. He hadn't made any comment about his missing left arm and neither had she; then again, he hadn't said anything about her crippled left hand, so she supposed that was about even.

She parked her car and killed the engine, sitting back in the seat to look at the man. His profile was striking in the shadows from the parking lot's lone streetlamp, and Peggy already knew how she wanted this evening to end. "Shall we go inside?" she asked.

He blinked, rubbed his hand over his face. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, sounding uncertain for the first time that evening.

"As certain as I am about anything."

"You haven't... well. Haven't asked." He shrugged his left shoulder under his jacket, sending the empty sleeve swinging.

"Would you like me to?" At his silence, Peggy held in a sigh. Young men were so alike, all bluster and ego hiding their uncertainty. "What happened to your arm?"

A shadow ghosted over his face. "Desert Storm," he said shortly. The military action in Kuwait had been brief in the early months of 1991; Peggy had been busy focusing on the intelligence communities across Europe as the Soviet bloc crumbled, but she had known the events were going on. She also knew the casualty numbers that had come out of Kuwait, on all sides. "That's about it."

Peggy put her right hand on his knee. His leg was firm and muscular under her touch, his body warm through the fabric. "I'm sorry."

He put his hand over hers, curling his fingers around her palm. "It's fine," he said, brushing away the moment. "What happened to you?"

Peggy rested her left hand, three fingers curled against the palm, against the steering wheel. "Hunting accident," she said wryly as she slid her hand up his thigh. "Come on."

She didn't touch him again until they were in his room with the door locked behind them. He set the latch, dropped the key on the small desk, then turned to her in the yellow light from the desk.

Peggy looked up at the man, his intense gaze almost burning her. She touched his cheek with her undamaged hand, then, leaning against his body, she kissed him.

His lips were soft on hers, his body firm where she pressed against him. He put his hand around her waist and held her as the kiss grew deeper, more desperate.

It was just physical, Peggy told herself as she curled her hand around the back of his neck, as his tongue touched hers. He made a soft growl in the back of his throat as he held her tighter, bending her backwards as he tried to deepen the kiss.

Peggy took his lower lip in her teeth and bit down gently. The sound he made vibrated all the way through her body. She pulled back from the kiss and looked up at him, breathing hard. "Now might not be the best time to ask this, but do you have a condom?"

He stared at her for a moment, such intensity in his eyes that for a moment she wondered if he understood what she asked. Then he released her, stepping back. "Yeah, I do," he said, moving over to the small suitcase by the wall. "You know how it is, business trip, you never know."

He opened the suitcase, pulled out a couple of condoms, and tossed them on the bed's pillows.

Peggy smiled. Excellent.

She slid her jacket off her arms, folding it over the desk's chair. Putting a bit of sway in her step, she undid the buttons on her blouse one by one, pulling her shirt aside as she neared the man.

Once she was within reach, he helped her remove her shirt, running his hand over the skin of her stomach, up her back, stepping in to kiss her as he undid the clasp on her bra. The light in the room was dim enough that Peggy didn't bother explaining the scars on her chest or her belly, just pressed against the man as he tossed her bra away and reached for her chest.

She pushed him back until his legs hit the bed; he sat heavily, one hand still on her breast. Peggy stepped out of her high heels as he pulled her between his knees, his mouth going to where his hand had been, his lips soft, his tongue curling around her nipple, teeth gentle on her skin. Peggy didn't bother to hold in her moan at the sensation, burying her fingers in his hair.

While his mouth was busy on her breast, his hand slid down over her hip, down her leg, dipping under her skirt. His finger crept up her thigh to the edge of her underwear, and Peggy thanked the stars that she hadn't bothered to put on stockings before she went out that night.

"You're still rather dressed," Peggy said, pressing lightly on the back of his neck. He rolled his eyes up to look at her, pulling back. His lips were red and wet, and all Peggy wanted to do was to kiss him again. "Come on."

He let her help him out of his jacket and, more reluctantly, his shirt. He hadn't lost the entire limb; about a third of the upper arm remained, but the skin was scarred and disfigured all the way up his shoulder. She wondered absently at the scars; mechanical, rather than burns, but then he worked his hand under her skirt again and she stopped thinking about it.

She ended up on her back, the man kneeling between her legs, his strong fingers sliding inside her, his thumb rubbing circles over her clit. Peggy's hand rested on his forearm, her knees around his hips. His concentration was intense as he stared down at her. One flick of his thumb sent a spasm through Peggy's body and she let out a sharp moan; he responded by sliding his fingers into her body as far as they would go, then pulled out. Slightly frustrated, Peggy sat up and helped him to roll the condom on. He was thick and hard and when Peggy squeezed the condom around the base of his cock, he jerked in her hands.

"Shall we?" Peggy asked, one eyebrow arched.

He pushed her back down and used his hand to guide himself inside her. She was wet and ready for him, but the width of him was almost more than her body was ready for. As he sank into her, she couldn't stop herself from crying out at the sensation.

He pressed inside her, so deep that for a moment Peggy couldn't breathe. Sliding his arm around her shoulders, he held her close as he pulled out and pressed in again, and again.

Peggy hooked her legs around his waist and held his shoulders as he thrust into her over and over. The sensation of him filling her up, then sliding out and doing it all over again, pulled little sounds from deep in her throat. The noises she made seemed to spur him on, for his movements sped up until Peggy's entire focus narrowed to their bodies moving together, his hips slamming against hers.

The sensation was building in her body, higher and higher, until suddenly she tipped over and her body convulsed with her climax. She let out a cry as her knees tightened around his waist, her fingernails digging into his back. He groaned into her shoulder as he kept fucking her through her climax. He thrust against her one last time, his body stiffening as he came. For a long moment, they were frozen like that, then he slumped against her, spent.

For her part, Peggy couldn't move. All his weight was on top of her, holding her down, and that was just what Peggy wanted.

After a few minutes, reason intruded into the pleasant haze. Peggy slid her leg down his side, pushing gently at his shoulder. He made a slightly reluctant sound, but moved to pull out of her. As he sat up to deal with the condom, Peggy stretched out on the bed, her body aching pleasantly. She curled up on her side, watching the man clean himself up, then come back over to the bed.

He slid under the sheet, pressing himself flush along her body as he moved in to kiss her again. This time, the kiss was slow and lazy, a lovely conclusion to the act they had just shared.

Peggy lost herself in his touch; his chest pressed against hers, their legs tangling together. He lay on his left side, so his shortened arm was underneath him as he ran his right hand up and down her spine.

She was so warm, and it had been so long since she had been with another person like this, that Peggy's eyes closed almost involuntarily. She knew she should get dressed and leave, but maybe...

Maybe... not yet.

* * *

Peggy opened her eyes. The unfamiliar room and the sensation of being naked pulled her up to a sitting position before she could even make sense of what was going on.

"Are you all right?"

Peggy turned her head. The man lay in the bed beside her, the sheets decorously pulled up over his hips now. His right arm was out as if she had been cuddled up with him.

She remembered now. She had met this man in the bar and had returned to his motel room, where she must have fallen asleep after they'd had sex. She didn't remember his name and wasn't sure if she cared.

She shook her head to rid herself of a lingering dizziness. "I'm fine," she said. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"It's no problem," he replied, sitting up. "It was nice, you know, just lying here."

Peggy reached out and touched the man's cheek. "It was," she said, although she didn't remember much of it. She was conscious of how late it was getting, and she knew she needed to be up early the next day to make breakfast for Dylan. "But  I do have to be going."

He pulled his legs up and rested his arm on his knee; there was no hint of self-consciousness about his left arm now. "It was a nice way to end the night," he said, smiling.

Peggy stood, holding back a wince at the ache between her legs. She was going to be feeling this tomorrow. "It was."

Quickly, Peggy dressed, conscious that the man was watching her every move from the bed. She remembered his name now, it was Alexander. Still, it didn't make much of a difference. Stepping into her high heels, she knelt on the side of the bed and kissed the man one last time, those lovely lips soft on hers.

"Thank you for a lovely evening," she said as she pulled back.

"Can I call you?" he asked, sitting up straighter on the bed and looking at her hopefully.

Peggy picked up her jacket from the chair back with one hand, and her car keys with the other. "No," she said, smiling one last time, then left the room.

The night air was cool, and she could have used the jacket, but it was nice to have the chill to wash the cobwebs out of her head. Truth be told, she was uncomfortable she had fallen asleep in a stranger's bed. The last time she had fallen asleep next to someone, it had been Natasha Romanova in Hawaii, the week after Howard and Maria died, and while Natasha wasn't exactly a friend, she certainly was not a stranger.

Peggy unlocked her car door and tossed her jacket into the back seat. She did her usual check of the vehicle to make sure that it hadn't been compromised while she was occupied (nothing in the front or back seats, no scratches on the paint by the locks, no loose wires under the steering wheel). Then she got into the car, started it, and drove off.

Her flat was in the same state she had left it hours before. Peggy locked the door behind her and set the security system before walking into the living room. The place was a bit of a mess; pieces of the Halloween costume she was making for Dylan lay strewn over the sofa, while coffee table held pieces of a pistol she'd been cleaning the previous night.

No matter what happened that night, this was still her life.

Peggy dropped her keys onto the hall table, then turned her jacket over to retrieve her wallet from the inside pocket. As her hand moved over the fabric of one of the outer pockets, she felt something crinkle.

She sighed. It would be so like a man, she thought idly, to have put his phone number in her pocket while she wasn't looking. Not thinking too much of it, Peggy reached into the pocket to retrieve the paper, with vague thoughts of throwing it away. She pulled out the paper and unfolded it.

On the front of the paper, written in black ink, was the letter _**M**_.

Peggy's world narrowed to a single, screaming point. The last time she had seen a note like this, the Winter Soldier had been standing right behind her.

Peggy dropped her jacket and dove for the coffee table, assembling the pistol in seconds. She cocked the gun to put a bullet in the chamber and quickly put her back to a wall, adrenaline and fear clouding her mind. _Stop it!_ she told herself firmly. The Winter Soldier was not in the apartment with her. The note had not been in her jacket before she arrived at the bar, he must have been following her that night.

Which meant he might have followed her home.

He might be coming for her at that very moment.

Crouching down to stay out of sight of the windows, Peggy edged around to turn off the overhead lights. The faint light from the kitchen, the one she always left on while she was out, shone enough brightness into the living room that Peggy could see the note lying on the floor, mocking her with its presence.

If the Winter Soldier was coming for her, perhaps the note would give her a clue as to how he would try to kill her this time.

Gun in her right hand, Peggy reached for the note with a hand crippled by the Winter Soldier, and unfolded it.

> _Margaret._

Peggy forced herself to breathe evenly. Of course the Winter Soldier knew her name, she had been hunting him for years.

> _My orders were to kill you. When you survived our encounter in Paris, I was sent for you, to finish what we started._
> 
> _But tonight, as I watched you sleep, I realized that there was another way to end this. My bargain is this: If you stop trying to find me, I will let your family live. If you leave me alone, no harm will come to your daughter or her child._
> 
> _I do not presume that others from SHIELD will not look for me, but you are the only one who has ever gotten this close to me, has ever really seen me. They are not my concern. But if you aid anyone trying to stop me, your family will pay the price for you not upholding your end of the bargain._
> 
> _If you continue to hunt me, your family will die._
> 
> _This  is your choice._

That was it.

Peggy read the letter again, acid churning in her stomach. If the Winter Soldier had been watching her sleep, he could not have been outside the room. The motel room's closet door had been open a crack, and Peggy had been so focused on the man in the bed that she hadn't even considered that anyone might be hiding there.

It had been a set-up, start to finish, and Peggy had fallen for it. The Winter Soldier must have thought she might let her guard down around a man she wouldn't consider a threat, had found such a man and sent him to waylay her in the bar. And she had made it _easy_ for them, falling for the attentions of handsome man, going back to his motel room and into his bed.

He must have drugged her, somehow, to fall asleep in his bed, Peggy thought grimly. That must have been when the Winter Soldier was to have killed her, and made it look like a sexual predator had killed her.

Instead, he had written her this letter while she slept, had put it inside her jacket. Had he left the room before she woke? Or had he returned to his hiding place to watch Peggy wake up, to converse with Alexander as she dressed, only to step out of hiding after she left?

She wondered if the Winter Soldier would kill Alexander now that he had served his purpose of seducing her, and wasn't sure if she cared.

Peggy folded the note and carefully stood. The Winter Soldier might even now be watching her, monitoring her, to see what her next move would be.

Well, if he was watching her, if he knew her so very well, he knew what she would do next. He might say that her family was safe, but Peggy was taking no chances.

Tucking the pistol and the letter into her jacket pocket, Peggy grabbed her wallet and keys. It was late, but she had to be sure that Sarah and Dylan were safe.

* * *

Sarah answered Peggy's knock at the front door holding a baseball bat. "It's midnight," Sarah said in a whisper, undoing the chain on the door. "Why are you here?"

"Why are you holding a bat?" Peggy asked, worry churning in her stomach.

"Because it's midnight," Sarah said, standing aside to let Peggy in. "Luke's not going to be home for like half an hour."

"Is Dylan asleep?" Peggy asked, scanning the room for any sign of an intruder.

"Of course he is." Sarah caught Peggy's arm. "What the hell is going on?"

Peggy took a deep breath. "One of the flats in my building had something go wrong with the gas," she lied. "I thought I might stay in your guest room for a few days."

"Of course you can," Sarah said. She still held Peggy's arm. "Why didn't you call first?"

Because she couldn't risk the Winter Soldier thinking she was calling SHIELD, but Peggy could never tell her daughter that. She had spent decades keeping Sarah's existence a secret; only a few people in SHIELD knew about her, and even fewer had known Howard Stark was her father. Now, only Nick Fury and Phil Coulson were left alive.

Now, Peggy tried to smile at her daughter. "You know I'm still not used to these mobile phones," she said. "I'm sorry I startled you."

Sarah lowered the baseball bat. "It's okay," she said. "It's just, you know."

Peggy stepped in and kissed Sarah on the cheek. "I'm going to check on Dylan."

Checking on the baby a couple times a night was a reflexive behavior on Peggy's part, that Lucas and Sarah had stopped questioning over the years. So Sarah said nothing as Peggy climbed the stairs and went down the hall on silent feet, past the open bathroom door, past Sarah and Lucas' room, to the closed door of Dylan's room at the end of the hall.

The house was still, the only faint sound Sarah's footsteps in the kitchen below. Peggy quietly opened Dylan's door, and crept soundlessly into the room.

The curtain was open, letting in a faint sliver of light from the outside street lamp. Peggy walked over to the bed where Dylan lay sprawled on his back, the blankets half-kicked to the ground. He was fast asleep, his chest moving as he breathed.

Peggy sat on the edge of the small bed. Dylan was safe, and so was Sarah. The Winter Soldier hadn't hurt her family.

Not yet.

Dylan shifted in his sleep, and Peggy reached out to touch his hair. As he moved, a faint flutter of white caught Peggy's attention, half-tucked under Dylan's pillow.

Peggy pulled the scrap of paper out into the light, the thick black **_M_** harsh against the paper.

Heart in her throat, Peggy turned the paper over.

> _Make your choice._

Peggy was on her feet in an instant, pistol out of her pocket and in her hand. She quickly scanned the room. The only place for a man to hide was the closet. Carefully, Peggy crossed the room. Pistol at the ready, she opened the closet door.

There was no one there.

She checked under the bed, then behind the curtains, just in case. The window was closed, but the latch was undone. Peggy knew Sarah was fanatical about keeping that latch shut tight, so Dylan didn't mange to tumble out the window.

Peggy's hand was shaking as she closed the latch. For the first time that night, she wondered if she would be sick. The Winter Soldier had been in Dylan's room; had stood by her grandson's bed as he placed the note under Dylan's pillow. He must have known this would be the first place Peggy would go once she found his note.

Tucking the handgun back in her pocket, Peggy went back over to Dylan's bed. She looked at the note again, then pushed it into her pocket with the other one.

Dylan stirred. Unable to stop herself, Peggy pulled the blankets back and picked Dylan up, cradling his head in her left hand as she hugged him to her. The Winter Soldier had stood beside Dylan, and had not harmed him.

"Mama Peggy?" Dylan mumbled sleepily.

"Shh," Peggy said, rocking him gently. "You woke up and needed a hug."

"Oh." Dylan wrapped his little arms around Peggy's neck. "Hugs."

Peggy kissed the top of his head, a wave of emotions crashing over her. The Winter Soldier could have killed Dylan that night, Dylan and Sarah and even her. But instead, he had crippled Peggy more effectively than if he had cut her hand off in Paris.

Because there was no choice for Peggy to make. She could never do anything to put Sarah or Dylan at risk, no matter the cost.

"Mama Peggy?" Sarah stood in the doorway. "Did Dylan wake up?"

"I need a hug," Dylan said, his words slurred with sleep. "Mama Peggy hugs."

Peggy looked at her daughter. Sarah had so much on her plate, things a normal person would worry about – her job, her husband, raising a child and trying to pay the bills. She did not need to know that the world's most deadly assassin had stood in her son's room that night. Peggy swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. "I'm sorry, darling," she said.

"It's fine." Sarah motioned with her hands, and Peggy stood, holding Dylan and rocking him while his mother straightened the sheets and pillows.

Peggy was struck with a vision of what might have happened if Sarah came into Dylan's room while the Winter Soldier was there. Would he have hidden in the shadows? Or would he have struck out?

Peggy kissed Dylan's head. The boy had grown limp with sleep, and he didn't stir as she laid him back into his bed. Sarah pulled the blankets up to cover her son. "Did you open the curtains?" she asked, moving over to the window.

Peggy felt the handgun in her pocket, the Winter Soldier's notes crumbled next to it. "I wanted to check outside," Peggy said, the lie tasting like ashes in her mouth. "That's all."

Sarah pulled the curtains closed, and she followed Peggy out of Dylan's room. Closing the door firmly, Sarah looked at Peggy. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Peggy nodded. "It's been a bit of a strange night," she said. "I should get some sleep."

"Okay," Sarah said, staring at her mother with uncertainty. "I'm going to wait up until Lucas is home."

"You have to be up early," Peggy reminded her.

"I want to make sure he's okay," Sarah said, rubbing her arms. "It's just..."

"What?"

"It's been weird, the last few days," Sarah said after a moment. "I'm probably imagining things, but it's like... I don't know. Something out of the corner of my eye. Like someone's been watching me."

Peggy's heart skipped a beat. It must have been the Winter Soldier; who else could it be? "Do you know who?"

Sarah shook her head. "I'm sure I'm imagining it."

Peggy put her arm around Sarah's shoulders. "Tell me if it keeps on happening, all right?"

Sarah nodded. "I just want Lucas to come home, that's all." She smiled faintly. "Go, have a shower. The guest room's all made up."

Peggy left her daughter in that hallway and made her way to the main floor bathroom. Locking the door and putting her pistol on the countertop, Peggy stripped and stepped into the shower. She turned the water on as hot as she could stand, then reached for the soap.

Now, with the immediate danger behind her, Peggy was left to focus on the other parts of her evening. She did not know how she could have been so _stupid_ , to have played so easily into the Winter Soldier's trap.

No, she could not lie to herself. The man the Winter Soldier sent after her, Alexander, had been a very handsome man, and he had played his part so convincingly. She had never doubted his interest in the proceedings; his physical response to her in bed had been obvious enough. At no time had he indicated that anyone else was in the motel room, or that he had any interest in harming her.

She considered, then discarded, the idea that he had not known the Winter Soldier's plan. Someone had sent him after Peggy, and someone had to have placed that note in Peggy's pocket, a note that was written after she fell into a drugged sleep.

Peggy ran the soap over her skin. She wasn't entirely sure what she felt about what had happened before she fell asleep. In all her years working in espionage, she had never heard of a male agent being sent in to seduce a female agent. Female agents seducing men was a tactic both sides used during the Cold War, and once or twice she had heard of a male agent being seduced by another man, although the culture of espionage being what it was, the men didn't like to talk about that. But while female agents were so few and far between, Peggy supposed it was inevitable.

As old as she was, she had been the one to fall into the honeytrap. Wonderful.

Peggy finished her shower and dried herself. The guest room still held several items of her clothing from her occasional night staying over at Sarah's house, and she found something to wear to bed. Muffled voices elsewhere in the house told her that Lucas had arrived home, and was speaking with Sarah.

Holding her pistol like a security blanket, Peggy got into bed. Making sure the gun's safety was on, she curled up and stared into the darkness, too wound up to sleep.

The Winter Soldier had said he was giving her a choice, but Peggy knew it was no choice at all.

After an hour, when the house was silent and still, Peggy gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed to retrieve her mobile phone. She called a familiar number and waited as a phone rang on the other side of the country.

* * *

Peggy was awakened early the next morning by a small child pouncing on her. Thanking her stars that she'd left the safety on the gun under her pillow, Peggy sat up and bundled a giggling Dylan into a blanket, carrying him out into the living room.

They watched videos until Sarah stumbled out of bed, then Peggy fixed breakfast while Sarah got ready for work and Dylan made up songs to sing to his toy truck.

"What are you going to do today?" Sarah asked, trying to button her blazer jacket with one hand.

"I thought we'd go to the Aquarium."

Sarah stopped and looked at Peggy. "In Seattle? That's a two hour-drive each way."

Peggy shrugged. "It's not that bad. I can pick some things up at the market while I'm there."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure." Peggy wet a cloth and went to clean up the mess Dylan was making of his porridge. "What do you say? Do you want to go to the Aquarium?"

"Yes!" Dylan said, banging his spoon on the table. "What's a 'quarium'?"

"Whatever you're up to, be safe," Sarah said, kissing Peggy on the cheek. She bent down and kissed Dylan goodbye. "Be a good boy for Mama Peggy today."

"He's always a good boy," Peggy said. "When does Lucas have to go back to work?"

"He's back on shift at noon," Sarah said, grabbing her briefcase. "I was going to let him sleep 'til then. Leave a note if you're going to leave, okay?"

Sarah left. Peggy got everything cleaned up, dressed Dylan quietly, so they didn't wake his father, left a note on the counter, and had Dylan strapped into the car ready to go within the hour.

The drive from Aberdeen to Seattle was rather easy, leaving Peggy with plenty of time to keep Dylan entertained. They stopped at a restaurant in Dupont for a bathroom break and for Dylan to stretch his legs. Peggy drove as fast as she could, but even so, by the time they got to Seattle, Dylan was cranky from the hours of inactivity. Peggy let him run around outside the aquarium for a while, letting off nervous energy, then took him inside. Dylan was entranced by the sea creatures, pressing his nose to the glass of the exhibits. He was particularly taken with the otters, and on the way out of the aquarium Peggy bought him a small stuffed otter toy to play with.

"Now," Peggy said, checking her watch, "We are going to get you something to eat."

Dylan hugged his otter toy to his chest and beamed up at her. "Otter eat too!"

"If you like." It only took them a few minutes for them to get to the market, bustling with people this close to noon. Peggy bought a coffee for herself and a bagel for Dylan, and sat them down at a small table.

Dylan chattered happily, pretending to feed his otter bits of bagel. Peggy paid half attention to the boy, scanning the crowd as she waited for her contact, the real reason she had driven over a hundred miles with a small child into the city.

She saw him after a few minutes, and for the first time in hours, she took a deep breath.

Nick Fury stopped beside her table. "Mind if I join you?" he asked.

Peggy stood, going up on her toes to kiss Nick on the cheek. He wore darkened glasses, the lenses hiding his damaged eye from sight. "It's good to see you," Peggy said, smiling up at him. "It's been a while."

"Years," Nick agreed, taking a seat beside Peggy. He looked at Dylan, who was staring at Nick, his bagel forgotten in his hands. "And who is this young man?"

"This is Dylan," Peggy said, pushing the boy's dark hair back from his forehead. "Dylan, this is my very dear friend Nick. Can you say hello?"

Dylan mouthed something at Nick, and Peggy let it go. She reached into her pocket and removed the two notes, handing them to Nick. He read them over, then handed them back to Peggy. "That's interesting," he said. "Do I need to ask what you're going to do about it?"

"I don't know, do you?" Peggy asked archly.

Nick shook his head. "I'm going to get coffee," was all he said. While he was gone, Peggy tidied up the mess Dylan was making with the bagel and brushed the crumbs off his shirt. When Nick returned, he was holding two coffees. He slid one across the table to Peggy. "You look like you need it. Not get much sleep?"

Peggy didn't bother to respond to that. Dylan's interest in Nick had waned, and the boy was concentrating on telling a story to his toy otter.

"Why did you want to see me?" Nick asked quietly, his voice masked by the hum and buzz around them.

Peggy told Nick the whole story, including the less savory parts of her evening. When she was done, Nick raised his eyebrows. "What are you going to do next?"

Peggy shook her head. "You know what I have to do," she said. "I can't have him thinking that I'm hunting for him, not now."

"You want back in SHIELD?" Nick asked. "We could sneak you back in as an active agent, put you on other cases. You're one of the best, Margaret, always have been."

Peggy rested her elbows on the table, watching Dylan play. "I don't think I can," she said. "Not after last night. He was in Dylan's room, Nick."

Dylan looked up. "Do you know the man?" he asked.

Peggy frowned. "What man, darling?"

"The man in my room." Dylan plopped his otter onto the table. "I woke up and he went shh." Dylan demonstrated by putting his finger in front of his lips.

A wave of icy anger swept over Peggy. "When was this?" she asked, pulling Dylan over onto her lap and hugging him.

"Last night," Dylan said. He climbed up so he was standing on Peggy's leg. "And then he said, go to sleep, so I did."

"You weren't scared?" Nick asked.

Dylan shook his head. "I see him before."

 _Before_. Peggy's arm tightened around Dylan's body. "Where did you see him?" she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

"At the store, with mommy," Dylan said. "And the park."

If Dylan had seen the Winter Soldier in public, that meant he had to have seen the man's face. As far as Peggy knew, no one had seen the Winter Soldier's face, and lived.

Peggy pulled Dylan down so he was seated on her lap. The Winter Soldier had been very thorough indeed in figuring out how to get at Peggy. "I need you to do me a favor," she said when her heart climbed out of her throat. "If you see him again, can you show him to me?"

"Okay, Mama Peggy." Dylan wiggled until she let him go, and he went back to his own chair and his toy.

Peggy put her hands over her mouth. There was no choice for her to make. The Winter Soldier had shown her how easily he could get close to her family, and without knowing what he looked like, there was nothing Peggy could do.

"Do you think he's got something big planned?" Nick asked. "Getting you out of the way now?"

"I don't know." Peggy sat back. "I'm not even going to speculate."

"Margaret—"

But Peggy was already standing, bundling Dylan up into her arms. "Thanks for coming to see me," she said to Nick.

Nick also stood. "You know, if he's up to something, we're going to have to track him down, stop him."

"You can do whatever you have to," Peggy said. "I'm not getting into it."

"You want me to see if I can find his one-armed friend?"

"Good luck with that," Peggy said. "Do what you want, just don't involve me."

She knew Nick was watching her as she turned and walked off, her grandson safe and happy in her arms. She wasn't sure if she had ever felt this helpless, powerless to keep her daughter and grandson safe from an unknown, unseen ghost. If the Winter Soldier had found Peggy after all these years, he could find her again even if she took Sarah and Dylan and went off-grid. It was what he did. It was what made him so dangerous.

There was nothing she could do to keep her family safe, other than to trust the word of the man who had slaughtered so many people mercilessly over the years.

As Peggy slipped through the crowd, she made a vow to herself. She was going to everything in her power to keep Sarah and Dylan safe.

And if the Winter Soldier broke his word, if he came after them... well, Peggy would destroy him herself.

_To be continued_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. I went there.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://mhalachai.tumblr.com/). Are you?


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you would like to know in advance, this chapter has a small child in peril.

* * *

 

_October, 2000_

Peggy sat waiting to disembark the airplane, purse slung over one shoulder and briefcase in her good hand. Three weeks in London on SHIELD business and another four days in Washington DC were behind her, and all she wanted to do was to get off this airplane, escape the SeaTac airport, and get home to see Sarah and the family.

The flight attendants were finishing their landing check, and Peggy watched them idly as she thought about Sarah's children, her grandchildren. Dylan was seven now, in second grade and doing rather well in his schoolwork in his grandmother's biased opinion. He was growing into such a serious child, helping around the house and hardly ever complaining at his chores. Most of all, he adored being a big brother and tried so hard to take good care of his little sister.

Peggy's granddaughter was almost five years old now, a little button of a girl whose parents had saddled her with the unfortunate name of Eleanor, after Lucas' mother. Peggy had spent an hour coaching Dylan to call the newborn _Nora_ when Sarah and Lucas brought the baby home from the hospital,and the nickname stuck. The baby had her mother's dark curling hair and her father's smile and had been born six months after Peggy's encounter with the Winter Soldier's agent. Taking care of the girl had only strengthened Peggy's resolve to keep her family safe.

This was the first long trip Peggy had been on since Nora was born, and she could hardly wait to get home to see the children.

But first she needed to get off the blasted airplane.

After an interminable delay, the flight attendants finally opened the cabin door for the passengers to disembark. Peggy stood, glad to stretch her legs after the five-hour flight. After some shuffling, she was in the connecting tunnel and then out into the airport terminal.

After a quick stop in the ladies room, Peggy headed for the baggage carrousel. She didn't have long to wait for her suitcase. Luggage in hand, Peggy moved in the direction of the exit. A glimpse of a vacant phone booth reminded her that she should call Sarah.

In spite of the fact that she'd been using mobile communications devices since the Second World War, Peggy sometimes forgot to use the cell phone Sarah had insisted she buy, in case anything happened to one of the children when they were out. Digging it from her purse, Peggy turned on the power and waited for the thing to find reception.

Right away, the screen pinged with the notification of voicemail and two text messages. Peggy frowned at the phone. Sarah was the only one who called her on this phone, and she never sent texts. But the two messages were both from Sarah's phone number.

Peggy opened the most recent text.

**_call home when you get off the plane_ **

Peggy's stomach dropped. Quickly, she looked at the first message.

**_mama someone took dylan i need your help_ **

Peggy dropped her briefcase beside her purse as she quickly dialled into her voicemail. This couldn't be happening, Peggy thought numbly. She had been so careful to keep the children safe, had given up nearly her entire life with SHIELD to keep the Winter Soldier at bay. What could have happened to Dylan?

On the phone, the voicemail opened. It was Sarah, sounding more frantic than Peggy had ever heard her. "Mama Peggy, someone took Dylan," Sarah said quickly. "I don't know what to do, the school called and said a man grabbed Dylan when they let the kids out for lunch and put him in a van and drove away and they called the police and Nora was there but she's okay but I don't know what to do!" Her voice broke on the last word. "You have to do something, I don't know what but just do something, please."

The message ended. Heart in her throat, Peggy punched the button for the next message.

"It's me," Sarah's voice said, this time so heartbreakingly weary that Peggy's heart skipped a beat. "The police brought Nora home from preschool and the FBI and the cops are here but we haven't heard anything yet and I just don't know why…" Her voice broke into a choked sob. "I don't know why anyone would take Dylan, he's just a baby. And you're the only one I can think of who might be able to do anything. So call me when you get this, please. I don't know what to do."

There were no more messages.

Peggy took a deep breath, forcing her initial panic to the back of her mind. Dylan had been abducted by persons unknown, for reasons unknown. While Peggy might not be as involved with SHIELD as she had once been, she was still a senior consultant with SHIELD, and there were a lot of powerful people who owed her a lot of favours.

Slapping the cell phone shut, Peggy gathered up her baggage and strode over to the payphone. With one quick call to SHIELD's secure lines, she would access all the resources available to her.

She just hoped it was in time to save Dylan.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Peggy stepped out of Alan Brody's car, thanked the airplane mechanic for driving her from the Aberdeen airfield where the hastily chartered helicopter had deposited her, and walked up the drive to Sarah's house.

Several vehicles were parked along the street and up the driveway; some from the local police department, some unmarked but exuding the air of the FBI. A few local cops were gathered on the porch, and one stepped in her way as Peggy began to mount the stairs.

"Sorry ma'am, you can't come in."

Peggy's eyebrow arched and she was about to light into the youngster, when another constable bounced forward. "Easy, Rafe, she's family."

The young police officer backed up. Only once he was out of her way did Peggy look to Sgt. Smith. The man had a child in Dylan's class, Peggy faintly remembered from the parents' assembly at the start of the school year. "Sergeant," Peggy said briskly. "Any news?"

"No ma'am," the man said, touching the brim of his hat. "No word on Dylan yet."

With that, Peggy swept into the house.

Her entrance interrupted a gaggle of black-suited FBI agents in their setting up of electronic surveillance equipment in the living room. Stopping at the foot of the stairs, Peggy couldn't see Sarah or Lucas. Where could they be?

"Mama Peggy!"

Peggy turned around just in time to catch the small girl who had flung herself down the stairs at Peggy. Nora's arms went tight around Peggy's neck, clinging to her with fierce, vibrating energy. Peggy let her purse fall to the ground and held the little girl tight, taking reassurance in the strength of her grip.

"Bad men took Dylan!" Nora wailed into Peggy's shoulder.

"Yes, darling, I know." Peggy kissed Nora's hair, looking up the stairs as Sarah descended. "And we're going to get him back.

Sarah looked as if the life had been drained out of her, pale and folded in on herself. Her eyes were haunted as she descended the last step, walking right up to Peggy and hugging her, squishing Nora between them.

Peggy removed her left arm from Nora's back and placed it around Sarah's shoulders, drawing her daughter close. "We're going to get him back," Peggy said again, this time for Sarah's ears.

Sarah let out a shuddering breath. "How can you promise that?" she asked as she drew back, prying Nora off Peggy's neck.

"Sarah." Peggy cupped Sarah's cheek with her good right hand. "Listen to me. No one is going to rest until we get Dylan back, understand?"

Sarah closed her eyes for a long moment, until Nora leaned back in her mother's arms and patted Sarah on the cheek. Peggy watched as Sarah pushed her own emotions away, and opened her eyes to her daughter. "Do you want to go find Daddy?" Sarah asked. Nora nodded so hard her curls bounced. "Okay then."

Sarah put Nora down and the girl dashed off, past the FBI agents, to where Lucas was just coming out of the main floor bathroom. He still wore his doctor's scrubs.

"Lucas was at work?" Peggy asked quietly as she put her hand on Sarah's back and drew her over to the couch.

"We both were," Sarah said. She sat down heavily, putting her hand over her eyes. "Then the police called and we both got home as fast as we could."

Sensing movement, Peggy looked up. The larger of the FBI agents was standing nearby, staring down at her. Putting on her most phlegmatic expression, Peggy said, "Yes?"

"Miss Carter?"

Squeezing Sarah's shoulder, Peggy stood. "And you are?"

"Agent Flynn." The man, taller than Peggy by almost a foot, was looking at her as if he wasn't quite sure what to make of her. "Perhaps you can tell me your role in the household?"

Peggy bit back a sigh of frustration. It appeared as if Agent Flynn was going to be running this case by the FBI child abduction playbook. "I look after the children."

"Mrs. Alvarez tells us you've been out of town on business."

"I have."

Flynn's expression was growing darker by the second. "And what exactly is it that you do?"

Peggy was already tired of this. "Nora!" she called, and waited as the girl dashed out of the kitchen and over to the couch. "Go get my purse, will you, love?"

Nora ran across to where Peggy had dropped her purse, grabbed it in both hands, and ran back to the couch. She dropped the purse beside Peggy and climbed bodily onto Sarah's lap, wrapping her arms around her mother's neck.

"Did you bring me anything?" Nora asked, her voice muffled by Sarah's shoulder.

Flynn gave a faint smile at Nora's question, while Sarah just hugged the girl tighter. "We'll go into all of that later," Peggy said. She pulled her SHIELD badge out of the purse and tossed it over to Flynn. "Perhaps you can look into that and then somehow manage to exclude me from your suspects list."

Sarah looked up sharply, but Flynn just glanced briefly at the badge and handed it off to the agent behind him. "You know what's going on?"

Peggy waved her left hand in the direction of the front door. "The officers out front were good enough to share. I got Sarah's message when I got off my flight in Seattle. It was rather succinct. What progress have you made?"

Flynn scratched his chin. "We've got the security footage from the school, and agents have spoken with the playground monitor who saw the abduction and called the police, but we've been having some difficulty in speaking with young Miss Nora here."

Peggy pushed her purse aside. "What difficultly?"

With a sideways glance at Sarah, Flynn said, "She doesn't want to talk about it."

"Nonsense." Peggy reached over and pulled Nora off Sarah's lap, making the girl stand before her. Nora crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at the ground. "Nora, do you have anything that you can tell us about the man who took your brother?"

Nora bit her lower lip and shook her head, hard.

This was decidedly strange behaviour from Nora. Normally the girl wouldn't stop talking, about things she had seen or heard about or even imagined. Peggy put her hands on the girl's waist and drew her closer. Nora did not protest, instead uncrossing her arms and patting Peggy's kneecaps with open palms.

Peggy pushed back the part of her that wanted to demanded Nora speak; her Agent Carter voice was better suited for a bevy of grown agents, not the little girl Peggy tucked in at night and made much ado over scrapped knees. She waited until Nora stopped patting her knees, then she put her finger under Nora's chin and raised her head gently. This time, the girl made eye contact. "Nora, something bad has happened, and so I'm going to have to speak to you like a grown up. Do you understand?"

These appear to have been the magic words; Nora straightened her back and nodded her head.

"A bad man took Dylan, like you said," Peggy went on. "And everyone here wants to help us get Dylan home again. Will you help us too?"

Nora looked to the right, then the left, ducking her head against her shoulder. Peggy kept her left hand on Nora's back to keep the girl from running away. After nearly a minute, Nora shook her head.

"No, you won't help us?" Peggy kept her voice even, like she did when the children were squabbling over something unimportant and she did not want to be seen taking sides.

Nora nodded, looking miserable.

Peggy didn't ask if Nora wanted her brother back; from Nora's obvious distress, there was something going on here.

 _Something_. Peggy looked around the room, at the FBI agents looming tall and masculine, at Lucas standing by the end of the couch holding Sarah's hand, at the shadows of the police officers standing outside the front door. Both Sarah's message and the FBI agent had said a man took Dylan, but Nora had said _bad men_.

"Nora, did you see the man who took your brother?"

Nora put her hands over her face, covering her eyes.

"Nora, love, look at me." Peggy pulled Nora's hands down until she could see Nora's eyes. "Did the man who took your brother say something to you?"

Nora put her finger in her mouth and chewed on the knuckle for a moment, then put her hand down and said, "He said, I say anything and he'll chop Dylan's foot off!"

A shivering thrill ran through Peggy's body at the unexpected violence. Beside her, Sarah let out a pained sound that she quickly muffled with her hand.

Nora was staring at Peggy with wide, scared eyes. Peggy deliberately let a little more of Agent Carter come out in her voice as she said, "That was a very bad thing for the man to say, wasn't it?"

Nora nodded again. She was watching Peggy very carefully.

"Nora," Peggy said, taking Nora's hands in hers, "Do you remember how sometimes I told you and Dylan stories about when I used to work with a partner?"

"Undercover," Nora agreed, and Peggy squeezed the girl's small hands in reassurance.

"Undercover. And the most important part of working undercover was that you always work with a partner, so if something happens to you, you know your partner is going to come and get you out."

"Or you have to go save him," Nora continued, warming to the familiar tale.

"Yes." Peggy kept her voice even, didn't let any hint of the anger or fear she was feeling into her words; Nora was so sensitive to tone and emotion. "Right now, Dylan needs our help. Will you be Dylan's partner? To help us get him back?"

Nora appeared torn, looking between Peggy's face and their joined hands.

"Nora."

The girl looked up. "Is Dylan _my_ partner too?"

Peggy reached up to smooth the hair back from Nora's face. "Darling, I promise you, if the bad men had taken you instead, Dylan would be doing everything he could to help us get you back safe and sound."

"Even if they cut my foot off?"

Sarah picked Nora up and gathered her into her lap. Peggy turned to face the girl; she couldn't let up now. "No one is going to cut off anything," she said, knowing even as she said the words that there was no guarantee that Dylan's captors would not harm him. God knew that Peggy had seen the depravity men could sink to in her time with SHIELD, but she had to focus on the bigger picture now. That was where Howard had always said she excelled, in closing her heart off to cauterize the wounds.

"I want to cut their feet off," Nora said angrily, twisting against her mother's tight grip. "I hate them!"

"Good," Peggy said. Sarah looked at her in surprise. "I hate them too." She reached out to tap Sarah's toes. "Can we play the memory game?"

Sarah still looked surprised and slightly baffled, but Nora was nodding, her expression clearing somewhat.

"What's the memory game?" Flynn asked.

Peggy glanced at him, annoyed at the interruption. "It's a game I play with the children, to help them improve their memories," she said, then turned back to Nora. "Do you remember where you were when the man took Dylan?"

"Yes!"

"Do you remember where you were before the man took Dylan?" Nora nodded. "Tell me."

"By the swings!" Nora said immediately. "Dylan wanted to swing until lunch. I wanted to swing too, yes I did."

Peggy did some mental math. The children were let out of school at ten minutes to twelve, and Dylan would often to play on the playground until Peggy came to collect them for lunch. In the few weeks after school began that fall, she and Nora would walk Dylan back to school, then as the little girl's preschool class only ran in the morning, grandmother and granddaughter would circle around to the playground down the street for a brief play, then home for Nora's afternoon nap.

It had been a routine that Alice Felstad, the neighbour one block over who had agreed to feed the children lunch and watch Nora in the afternoons while Peggy was away, had been happy to continue, Peggy recalled with a sinking heart. A routine easily observable from anyone in a car parked on the street near the school.

"Did you get to swing?" Peggy asked, going back to Nora's story.

"I did!" Nora punctuated this by jabbing at the air with her finger. "I was swinging and Dylan was swinging and then the man came over."

"Where did the man come from?"

Nora lowered her hand, poking violently at the couch cushions. "I don't know."

"Nora, try to remember." Peggy caught Nora's hand. "When you were on the swings, where was the man?"

Nora frowned, her fingers moving restlessly against Peggy's hand. "By the big tree," the girl said after a minute. "He was standing by the big tree."

"Did you see his face?" Nora nodded. "Had you ever seen him before?"

"No!" Nora's response was immediate and emphatic.

Lucas came around from behind Sarah and squeezing beside her on the couch. "Are you sure, sweetie?" he asked.

"Yes, Daddy, I know!" Nora said indignantly. "I never saw him!"

Peggy was not going to argue with Nora, given the amount of time and energy she had spent training the children into remembering faces. After the Winter Soldier had sent his one-armed lackey after her years before, and the Winter Soldier himself had snuck into Dylan's bedroom and woken the child, Peggy was determined that the children would be able to figure out if someone was following them around. "Nora," she said, drawing the child's attention away from Lucas. "I need to ask you about the man's voice."

Nora scowled, trying to curl further against her mother's chest. "He had a mean voice!"

"Did he have an accent?" At Nora's frown, Peggy said, "Did he say words like me, or did he have a normal voice?"

"Normal voice." Nora pressed her cheek against Sarah's shoulder. "Like the bad guys on TV."

Peggy sat back and glanced at Agent Flynn. "Anything else?"

"The surveillance footage at the school picked up on the man who took Dylan, but from the angle they couldn't tell if there was anyone else in the van," the man said quietly.

Peggy put the question to Nora, but the girl was done talking. She buried her face in Sarah's shoulder and clung to her mother.

After a few minutes, Peggy sat back. There was no point in pushing the girl now; once she got frustrated like this, Nora usually started making things up and Peggy didn't want to get her to that point.

"Come on," Lucas said, taking Nora from Sarah's embrace. "Do you want some lunch?"

"Yes," Nora said, her voice cracking into a wail. "I'm hungry!"

Lucas hefted Nora up to his shoulder and carried her into the kitchen. When the girl was out of earshot, Flynn let out his breath in a huff. "That didn't get us much," he said.

"You know that this man hadn't physically approached the children before," Peggy countered. "So this wasn't a matter of him getting frustrated and doing something as stupid as going after them in a schoolyard."

"Stupid?" Sarah exclaimed. "Some monster grabbed my son and all you can do is call it 'stupid'?"

"Can you think of another place from where abducting a child would have gotten such a rapid police response?" Peggy asked, looking squarely at Sarah. "From a crowded schoolyard with surveillance cameras on the playground and adults not ten yards away?"

Sarah got to her feet and stormed across the room. She yanked open one of the drawers on the desk by the wall and pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

"Don't go too far," one of the other FBI agents said, not standing in Sarah's way as she made for the back door.

Once the room was clear of Alvarezes, Agent Flynn sat down on the coffee table, facing Peggy. "How reliable is the girl's word?" he asked.

Peggy rubbed the scars on her left hand. "Usually she's very reliable. When she's talking about things she's made up, she speaks differently."

"Do you have any idea why Dylan would have gone with a stranger without kicking up a fuss?"

"The man probably threatened Nora," Peggy said. "I'd like to see that surveillance footage."

Flynn acquiesced, albeit with ill-humour. The FBI had a computer set up, hooked into the house's state-of-the-art ADSL line Sarah used for work, and Peggy watched the grainy surveillance footage on the monitor in silence. Just as Nora had said, Dylan and Nora were playing on the swings as the man came into the frame from the direction of the schoolyard's large tree. A man of average height and build, clean-cut with light hair. His face was partially visible to the camera. Peggy did not recognize him.

The man approached Nora's swing, saying something to draw her attention. Dylan, who had been swinging high, put his foot into the dirt to slow himself and was nearly flung off the swing with the force of his stop. He stumbled off the swing, putting himself quickly between Nora and the stranger. There was a pause, in which it appeared as if the man was saying something to Dylan.

Then Nora stepped off her swing, reaching out for Dylan's hand like she always did when they were walking in public, and the man clamped his hand down on Dylan's arm and dragged him away, speaking over his shoulder at Nora. At first, Nora had been following them, then she pulled up sharply and stood still as the man pulled Dylan away, off-screen.

"Putting security cameras up around schools," Peggy said to herself. It was curious, really, how she wasn't really feeling anything. Not panic, not anger, just… anticipation, of a mission she had to complete.

Flynn, standing at her side, misunderstood her words. "Back when I was a kid, they didn't need them."

The man was in his mid-forties; he would have been in school in the later part of the sixties. She considered reminding him of all the bad things that happened to children in the sixties, but let it drop. There wasn't any point.

"I'm going outside," Peggy said instead. She walked past the kitchen, hearing Lucas's voice low and muffled, with Nora's higher tones rising above, before making her way over to the back door and out onto the back porch.

Sarah sat on the top step, looking out at the back yard. She had a lit cigarette between her lips, with two spent cigarette ends crushed out on the top step beside her.

Peggy hung back for a minute, but when Sarah refused to acknowledge her presence, she pulled a chair over to the railing beside Sarah and sat down.

Sarah finished drawing on the cigarette and stubbed it out on the step. "My children aren't your next generation of spies," she said angrily, digging another cigarette out of the package.

"I never thought they were," Peggy said evenly. She clenched her right hand into a fist to keep from touching Sarah. She knew her daughter would not welcome the gesture. "We play games, that's all."

"Games," Sarah spat back, lighting another match with a shaking hand, nearly setting her hair on fire. "You had my daughter talking about details of her brother's abduction like it was some sort of _game_ , when I spent hours trying to get her to talk and she didn't say a thing!"

Peggy slipped out of her chair and went to sit on the step beside Sarah. She took the cigarette from Sarah's hand and took a drag on the thing, feeling the hot smoke filling her lungs. She exhaled and handed the cigarette back to Sarah. "Sometimes it's easier for children to think in terms of games than anything with real consequences," Peggy said.

Sarah stared at the cigarette's glowing end. "Was this because of you?" she asked after a minute, her voice losing its angry edge. "Did someone take Dylan because of you?"

Peggy shook her head. She had spent the long helicopter ride from Seattle asking herself that very question. "Whoever took Dylan didn't do it because of anything to do with my work with SHIELD," Peggy said.

"How can you be sure?" Sarah demanded, turning her head to glare at Peggy.

Peggy pressed her left hand against her knee, feeling the familiar ache of the scars stretching. "If this had been something from my world, they would not have taken Dylan. They'd have taken Nora. Or gone after you directly."

She did not add that anyone who would have gone after the children as a way to get to Peggy would likely have killed one of them and taken the other as a message. Sarah did not need to hear that.

But taking Dylan, an intelligent boy of seven, instead of little Nora, didn't make any sense from any standpoint.

(Peggy had wondered, deep in the back of her mind, if this was the Winter Soldier's doing. She had kept her end of the bargain, keeping well away from anything that looked like it might be tracking him. But no, had the Winter Soldier decided to go after the children to punish Peggy for some imagined sins, he would have left a message at the abduction sight, or just killed the children outright. The Winter Soldier might be a killing machine, but he did not torture children.)

"Is it because of Howard?" Sarah asked, and that drew Peggy around.

"What do you mean?"

Sarah flicked the still-glowing cigarette out onto the wet lawn. "Howard's money, is that what they want?" she demanded. "If they took Dylan for money, why haven't they called yet? What are they waiting for?"

This time, Peggy did put her arm around Sarah's shoulders. "We are going to do everything to get Dylan back," she promised. "If they want money, we'll give them money. If they want some sort of computer code you're working on, we'll give them that. We are going to get Dylan back."

Sarah pressed her hands against her stomach and curled over. "How can you say that when you're just sitting here?" she whispered, staring out at the grass.

Peggy kissed her daughter's hair. "You think I didn't call in every favour to find Dylan?" she said quietly. Sarah looked at her sideways. "There are a lot of good people helping us, even if you don't see them here."

Sarah rubbed her hands against her knees. The scared edge was gone from her voice now, focusing on the present. "Do they need anything?" she asked. "Pictures or anything? The police called in another K-9 unit from Olympia to go over the schoolyard, I gave them one of Dylan's sweaters…"

"They have all they need," Peggy said. "Come on, let's go back inside and see how Nora and Lucas are."

Sarah let Peggy haul her upright. It might have been the grey light from the overhead cloud-cover, but Peggy was suddenly stuck that her daughter was growing old. She was over thirty now, lines in the corners of her eyes.

Howard had been dead for almost nine years, and on some days it felt as if no time at all had passed for Peggy.

Ruthlessly, Peggy pushed those old memories aside. Finding Dylan was the only thing that mattered. Memories had no place here, not now.

* * *

The hours stretched on, and the kidnappers did not call.

Around five o'clock, there was a spot of excitement when patrol cars found the kidnappers' van in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The K-9 team confirmed that Dylan had been in the van, according to Agent Flynn.

More law enforcement officers began to arrive at the house, and both Sarah and Lucas once again were interviewed by the local police. Peggy was trying to juggle the crowd with communicating remotely with the SHIELD agents when something, _something_ , caught at her attention.

What was it?

Blue and silver whispers drifted on the edge of Peggy's awareness, pulling at her in slivers and fragments. Moving to the edge of the room, Peggy looked around.

Several of the police officers were talking with the FBI agents; one of the feds was examining pictures of the family up on the wall; and on the far side of the house, in the den where the doorway was almost blocked by the FBI agents, Nora sat on the big armchair while she talked animatedly to someone in a blue state trooper hat.

Peggy frowned. Moving a few steps to the left, she glanced into the kitchen. Sarah and Lucas were standing by the stove, hugging each other tight.

The whispers in Peggy's head were suddenly loud; discordant syllables harsh against her skull and she was moving then, around the cops and the agents, needing to get to Nora, needing to get to Nora _now_.

Pushing past one particularly large officer, Peggy burst into the den, only to find Nora alone.

Peggy picked Nora up with more urgency than grace, the girl protesting at the sudden movement. "Were you talking to someone?" Peggy demanded, brushing the hair back from Nora's face to reassure herself that the child was alright.

Nora nodded. "There was a man." She wrinkled her nose in concentration. "He had a hat."

"What did you tell him?"

"He wanted to know who took Dylan, so I told him all the things I told Mommy."

As Nora spoke, Peggy was moving back into the living room. Pulling the curtains aside, she looked out the front window at the driveway. There were no state trooper vehicles in sight.

"Why did you tell him those things?" Peggy asked, letting the curtain fall back.

"He said he was going to help find Dylan." Nora draped her arms around Peggy's neck and hugged her hard. "And I'm Dylan's partner so I helped."

Peggy carried Nora into the kitchen, where Sarah and Lucas were still leaning against the counter. Peggy set Nora down beside the coffee maker and bent over so she was looking Nora straight in the eyes. "Until we get Dylan back, I want you to stay with Mommy or Daddy or me, all the time," she said. "There are a lot of strangers around."

Nora digested this. "Even if I go to my room?"

"Yes."

"Even if I have to go _pee_?"

"Yes, even if you go to the bathroom." She watched Nora squirm for a moment. "Do you need to use the bathroom now?"

"Uh huh."

Sarah helped Nora to the floor. "Really?" she said to Peggy.

Peggy just looked at her, as Nora tugged her mother out of the room and around the corner.

Peggy slumped against the refrigerator door, the adrenaline surge receding. There had been something about the man Nora had been speaking to, something in the set of his shoulders, in the way the hat was tilted down to cover his face. It bothered Peggy more than she could explain.

"It's been six hours."

Peggy looked at Lucas, who was still leaning against the counter. His short-cropped hair was in disarray, deep stress lines etched at the corner of his eyes. "I beg your pardon?"

"Six hours since they took Dylan." Lucas nodded at the clock on the wall. Indeed, it was five minutes to six.

Needing something to do with her hands, Peggy took the half-full coffee pot off the burner and poured the stale coffee down the sink.

"Sarah keeps asking why no one's called for a ransom demand," Lucas went on. "Six hours, it's too long to think…"

Peggy turned on the cold water tap, putting her hand under the faucet to feel the temperature of the water. "This wasn't some pervert who spotted Dylan on the playground and grabbed him," she said. "Dylan was targeted and that means that whoever took him did so for a reason."

Lucas pushed off the counter and went over to the pantry. "Back when I was doing my residency, sometimes we had kids come into the emergency room, and we'd get them ready to transfer up to the children's hospital in Seattle. Kids who'd been…" His voice broke off, and he stood staring at the coffee tin in his hands as if he had no idea how it had gotten there.

Peggy took the tin from Lucas' hands. "Whoever took Dylan had a very specific purpose in mind," she said, voice soft to keep her words from the FBI agents in the living room.

He rubbed his eyes. "So why hasn't anyone tried to contact us?"

"I don't know." Peggy set about the mundane task of making coffee, making the batch strong. She had no doubt that the household had a long night ahead of it.

"Could it be about someone else?"

Peggy frowned at Lucas. "Who? My brother and his wife are in Florida, and your parents haven't been up to see the children since Nora was born."

Lucas shook his head. "Yeah, that's not it," he muttered. "But then what?"

Their conversation was interrupted by Nora's return. "Daddy, where does pee come from?" the girl asked, walking over to clutch at Lucas' leg. "Mommy doesn't know."

Lucas exchanged a glance with Sarah, who was leaning against the doorway. "Where does pee come from?" he repeated, picking Nora up. She nodded. "That's a good question. Why don't we go look in the encyclopedia?"

"Okay." Nora kicked her legs absently as Lucas carried her out into the living room.

Sarah watched them go, then transferred her gaze to Peggy. "How can you think about more coffee?" she asked.

"It's something to do." Peggy poured the water into the top of the coffee machine, set the pot back in its place, and pushed the button.

Sarah walked across the kitchen to Peggy's side, leaning against her. Peggy put her arm around Sarah's shoulders, drawing her daughter to her. "Why haven't they called?" Sarah asked, her voice cracking as she hugged Peggy tight.

Peggy patted Sarah's back. "I don't know," she said. "But you need to stay strong until they do."

Sarah pulled away, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "I'm getting sick of people telling me that," she said, solidity returning to her voice.

"Yes, it does seem the sort of thing one says when one has no idea what they're talking about," Peggy agreed. This brought a faint smile to Sarah's face. "We're going to get him back."

Sarah nodded. Peggy could tell from her expression that Sarah was beyond the point where she could believe anything, but Peggy had been around long enough to know that sometimes, holding onto faint hope was all that could get one to set one foot in front of the other.

The doorbell rang, and Sarah started at the sound. "Every time, I keep thinking that maybe Dylan came home, but it's always just another neighbor," she said, pushing her hair back behind her ears. "Wonderful."

She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Peggy alone for the first time in hours. Peggy looked down at her hands, one whole, the other a crippled ruin. She might be old, she might be retired from the life of an active agent, but these hands could still hold a gun, could still wield a knife.

If Peggy ever got her hands on the people who had abducted Dylan, if they harmed him nor not, she was going to kill them. That was a promise, one she would have made to Howard if he had still been alive.

Peggy was going to kill the people who had taken her grandson.

* * *

Outside, the sky darkened into blackness.

The phone did not ring.

* * *

The night stretched on, wearing tempers thin. Nora finally broke down at bedtime, crying inconsolably about missing Dylan. Sarah's frustrated snapping at the girl didn't help, so Peggy separated the two, carrying Nora upstairs for a bath. Nora cried herself out by the time Peggy put her into pajamas, helped her pull on one of Lucas' old sweatshirts the girl used instead of a security blanket, and then carried her along with two pillows and a thick blanket back down the stairs.

After settling Nora on the couch across the room from the FBI agents' phone set-up, Peggy sent Lucas to read Nora bedtime stories. She knew that would distract them both for a while.

Sarah sat by herself in the den, holding one of the small framed photographs from the wall. It had been taken at Dylan's last birthday party; in it, the boy had been smiling wide and happy.

Using her laptop, Peggy went back and forth with the SHIELD operatives who had been monitoring communications across the country; nothing concerning the abduction of a child along the West Coast had appeared across their screens that day. There had also been nothing concerning Peggy to which Dylan's abduction might have been related – small comfort, really, when Dylan had been missing for over twelve hours.

More time passed. Nora finally fell asleep, and Lucas dozed fitfully beside her.

Giving up on SHIELD for the time being, Peggy moved to sit on the stairs, looking out onto the living room, and waited. She was over eighty years old, and even after all this time, the inactivity of waiting grated on her nerves like a knife against bone.

But waiting was all she could do.

* * *

The phone rang at nine minutes past three in the morning.

The first ring froze everyone in the room, then a flurry of near-silent activity. Sarah stumbled out of the den, while Lucas sat upright on the couch, his hand protectively on Nora's back. By some minor miracle, the ringing of the telephone had not woken the little girl from her slumber.

"Mrs. Alvarez, you know what to do," Agent Flynn was telling Sarah, guiding her over to the telephone. "We've talked about this. Keep him talking, and keep saying Dylan's name."

"Keep saying Dylan's name," Sarah repeated to herself as she collapsed into the chair. Her face had gone grey. Peggy slipped into the chair beside her, taking Sarah's hand. "Okay."

Agent Flynn pressed a button, and the ringing stopped as the call connected.

"Hello?" Sarah said, her voice catching.

A moment of silence, then, "Jesus, sis, what the hell is going on?"

It was Tony Stark.

Sarah's posture collapsed for a second, then she pulled her hand from Peggy's and slapped the edge of the table. "What the _fuck_ , Tony, why the hell are you calling?"

Over her head, the FBI agents were exchanging puzzled looks, but Peggy paid them no mind. At the sound of Tony's voice, she realized now what they had missed, all of them.

"I'm _calling_ because twenty minutes ago some delivery van driver dropped a seven-year-old off on my doorstep and I thought you might want him back."

Sarah clutched at the table. "You've got Dylan?" she gasped, going so pale that Peggy thought she might pass out. "What happened? Is he _okay_?"

Peggy sat forward. "Tony, it's Margaret," she said quickly. "Can you put Dylan on the phone?"

"Why are you there?" Tony asked. "What the hell is going on?"

"Dylan was abducted earlier today," Peggy said. "We've been waiting for word. Put Dylan on the phone, Tony."

"Fucking hell," Tony muttered. "Hold on." Then in a slightly muffled tone, Tony said, "Hey kid, you want to talk to your mom and old aunt Margaret?"

More scuffling, then the faint sound of breathing on the line. "Mommy?"

Sarah would have collapsed if Peggy hadn't held her up. "Dylan, hi sweetie," Sarah said through a sudden wave of tears. Lucas came up to the table and Sarah caught up his hands. "Oh baby, are you okay?"

A sniffle on the line. "Did Nora get hurt?" Dylan asked. His seven-year-old voice sounded heartbreakingly young on the phone line.

"Nora's fine," Lucas said quickly. "She's sleeping on the couch right now."

"Daddy?"

Peggy stood and nearly pushed Lucas into her chair. Sarah clung to Lucas, while Lucas pressed his cheek against Sarah's hair. "I'm right here, buddy."

"Is Mama Peggy there?"

Peggy gripped the back of Sarah's chair with her left hand, wooden slats pressing hard against her useless fingers. "Of course I'm here," she said, keeping her voice even. This wasn't over; she could not afford to succumb to emotions yet. Not until they had Dylan home and those who had taken him were punished. "We've all been looking for you."

Another sniffle. "He said they'd hurt Nora."

"No one hurt Nora," Peggy said firmly. "She's right here and she's asleep and no one's going to hurt her, do you understand?"

"Uh huh."

"Now I need to talk to Tony, put him back on the phone."

"Okay, Mama Peggy."

A brief scuffle, and Tony Stark's voice came back over the line. "Now will someone tell me what's going on?"

"Is Dylan hurt?" Peggy asked.

Tony's brief silence sent chills down Peggy's back. "He's got some bruises on him," Tony finally said, in a flat voice. "Looks like he went a few rounds with a bruiser, huh kid?"

Dylan said something, far enough away from the phone for the words to be indecipherable.

"He seems okay," Tony went on. "What do you think, kid? You okay?"

"I'm okay," Dylan said, his voice still distant but audible this time.

"So like I said, what's going on?" Tony asked.

Flynn handed Peggy a slip of paper, which read, _get us the address and we'll have agents there in a few minutes_.

"Tony, are you at your house in Malibu?" Peggy asked.

"Yes. Will you answer my question?"

Peggy ignored him. "In a few minutes, a collection of FBI agents will arrive to make sure Dylan is in one piece, please verify their identity before letting them in."

"If I say yes, will you tell me what the hell is going on?"

Peggy stood back, giving Sarah a look. The woman leaned closer to the microphone, her hands still entwined with Lucas's. "Some psycho grabbed my son off the playground at lunch today, Tony, that's what's going on."

While Sarah and Tony shot half-hearted barbs at each other, Peggy walked across the living room, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket as she went. Sitting on the couch beside the still-sleeping Nora, she dialed SHIELD and quickly gave a status report. She asked that SHIELD send an agent to Tony's house, to blend in as an FBI agent, and to report back to her.

That task completed, Peggy closed her phone and sat looking down at Nora. The girl's impossibly long eyelashes fluttered as she dreamed.

Dylan was safe.

After everything Peggy had done to keep the children safe over the years, in the end, it almost hadn't mattered. Someone had taken Dylan, and while they had him back (and Peggy still didn't know _how_ ), Dylan had been hurt.

She still wanted to kill someone.

At a particularly loud exchange between Sarah and Tony, Nora twitched and opened her eyes. She blinked in sleepy confusion for a minute before focusing on Peggy.

"Hello," Peggy said quietly, pushing Nora's hair back from her forehead. The girl made a sleepy noise as she reached out for Peggy. Peggy gathered the girl up, letting her wrap her small arms around Peggy's neck and snuffle against Peggy's shoulder. "Did we wake you up?"

"Uh huh."

"Well, now, that was on us." Peggy reached for one of the small blankets and draped it over Nora's back. "Do you want to hear some good news?"

"What?" Nora asked, leaning back to look at Peggy.

Peggy couldn't help but smile. "We found Dylan."

The slow, wide smile on Nora's face helped sooth a bit of the ache in Peggy's heart. "He home?"

"Not yet, but soon." Peggy stood, Nora in her arms, and walked over to the phone set-up. Sarah was now speaking with Dylan, who was giving sleepy answers.

"And Uncle Tony is going to fly you back home in his airplane," Sarah was saying. "Just as soon as it's morning. And we're all going to come to meet you, me and Daddy and Nora and Mama Peggy."

"Do I have to go to school?"

Sarah smiled at this. "No, not tomorrow. Maybe we'll give it a few days, how does that sound?"

Nora, who at four years old had no time for such logistical details, leaned towards the microphone and said, "Hi!"

"Nora?" Dylan said, his sudden excitement audible over the line. "Are you there?"

"Uh huh," the girl said as Peggy lowered her to her father's lap. "We had fried chicken for dinner. I saved you the best piece!"

"I didn't have dinner," Dylan said sadly.

Nora poked her finger against the table. "You can have pie at the airport," she said after a moment's consideration. "I like pie."

"Uncle Tony gave me ice cream," Dylan told her. "It was lemon."

"Hey, that was gelato," Tony interjected from somewhere near the phone receiver. In the background, a bell chimed. "Are those the federales, or should we be running for the panic room?"

Agent Flynn, who had been holding a cell phone to his ear, stepped closer to the microphone. "Agents from the LA field office are at your front door, Mr. Stark."

"Excellent. Hey kid, say goodbye so I can deal with yet another invasion of my privacy."

"Okay," Dylan said. "Bye Nora. Bye Mommy, bye Daddy."

"We'll see you very soon," Sarah said. "At the airport in three hours. Do you want me to bring you anything?"

There was the briefest of hesitations before Dylan said, "Can you bring Mr. Ruffles?"

"Of course. See you soon, baby."

"See you, Dylan," Lucas added. He nudged Nora. "Say goodbye to your brother."

"Byeee," Nora parroted, drawing out the vowel.

"We'll see you in a few hours," Peggy said. "All right?"

"Yes, Mama Peggy."

Then Tony came back on the line. "This is going to play hell with my itinerary," he said absently.

"Tell the Japanese distributors to shove it up their ass," Sarah retorted. "When was the last time you made it to any distribution meeting on time?"

Tony let out a sarcastic gasp. "Mrs. Alvarez, such language."

"Goodbye Tony," Peggy said, and nodded at the FBI tech, who ended the call.

There was a moment of stillness as everything settled. Sarah let her head sink into her hands, while Lucas hugged Nora tight.

Agent Flynn cleared his throat. "You didn't tell us you had a brother in Los Angeles," he said.

Sarah lifted her head. "I didn't think of it, it's not… not something that a lot of people know about."

"We are talking about Tony Stark," Flynn went on. "That makes you…"

"Howard Stark's illegitimate daughter," Peggy contributed as she slumped against the table.

"Right." Again Flynn hesitated.

"What?" Sarah asked, sitting up.

Peggy glanced at Flynn. "Do we know why Dylan was in Los Angeles?" she asked.

"He said he didn't know," Lucas said. "Just that they took him out of the van and put him in a car, then drove them to a small plane and when they landed, they drove into a hangar and stayed there."

"Did he say how he got to Tony's house?"

"No," Flynn said. "An agent who has experience working with children will be asking him those questions, I asked that one be assigned on the team from the LA field office."

"What are you talking about?" Sarah asked.

Peggy sighed. "The one motive for abducting Dylan that none of us considered would have been to put pressure on Tony Stark," she said bluntly.

"Why?" Sarah stood up, pacing across the room. "I haven't seen Tony since before Nora was born. He's never even met Dylan."

"But you still communicate? Write letters and such?"

"Well, yeah," Sarah admitted.

"Do you talk about the children?"

"Not really, we usually build computer code. He's trying to build an artificial intelligence and he's running into roadblocks."

"But you have mentioned the children to him."

"Yeah, on occasion." Sarah stared at Peggy. "You really think someone abducted my son to pressure _Tony_ on something?"

"It's not out of the realm of possibility," Peggy said, raising her eyebrow at Sarah.

Sarah clenched her jaw. "You know what?" she demanded. " _No_. Dylan is safe with Tony, we're getting him back in another couple of hours, so just _no_." She turned on her heel and stormed up the stairs.

Nora turned her face to Lucas. "Daddy, is mommy mad?"

Lucas kissed the top of Nora's head. "Mommy has a lot of feelings," he said. "You know how sometimes you have a lot of feelings and you get all mixed up inside?"

Nora nodded. "Oh, I know," she said sagely.

Peggy pushed herself to a standing position. She had been awake for over twenty-four hours, and she was feeling her age. "Thank you," she said to Flynn and the other agents. "For everything."

Flynn took her offered hand and shook. "These are the kind of cases we like," he said quietly. "Getting the boy back safe."

"Will you be coming with us to the airport?" Peggy asked.

"Yes," he said. "A couple of our agents will be flying back with Dylan, it's standard procedure in these cases."

Peggy smiled automatically at the man as she made her way up the stairs after Sarah. Faint sounds of vomiting came from the bathroom. The door was ajar, so Peggy went in.

Sarah was on her knees by the toilet, throwing up. Not saying anything, Peggy sat on the edge of the tub, leaning forward to pull Sarah's hair back from her face.

The fit soon subsided. Sarah pulled herself to her feet and went to the sink, to rinse out her mouth. She flushed the toilet, wiped her mouth on a hand towel, and sank to the floor, sitting with her back against the wall. She was crying soundlessly, tears falling down her cheeks.

Peggy waited.

After a few minutes, Sarah said, "I'm pregnant." She still wouldn't look at Peggy. "And I kept thinking, if we never saw Dylan again, he'd never know he was going to be a big brother again."

Moving stiffly, Peggy slipped to the floor at Sarah's side. "Dylan is fine," she said, putting her arm around Sarah's shoulders. "You'll see him in a few hours."

Sarah shook her head. "All day I've been trying to figure out why someone would take Dylan and I never even _thought_ about Tony, not even once."

"This isn't your fault." Peggy sighed. "I didn't think about Tony either."

She had been so caught up in thoughts of the Winter Soldier and of SHIELD that Peggy hadn't thought about how Dylan might be used against Sarah's half-brother.

Sarah made a noise in her throat. "Tony said Dylan had bruises," she said. "That someone hurt him."

"And as soon as we get him from Tony, we're going to take Dylan to the hospital and Lucas will make sure that he's going to be fine." Peggy looked at Sarah. "And then everyone's coming home and going to get some sleep."

"Fuck sleep," Sarah said under her breath. "Fuck this fucking goddamn day."

Peggy ruffled Sarah's hair. "How far along are you?"

"Like, almost three months." Sarah pulled her knees up to her chest. "We were going to tell you when you got back from your trip." She smiled weakly. "Surprise."

"Honestly. Come on," Peggy said, getting them both to their feet. "We've got some time before we're going to go get your boy. You should get some sleep."

"And are you going to sleep?" Sarah shot back, but letting herself be guided out of the bathroom.

"One day."

* * *

The sun was still below the horizon when Tony Stark's private jet touched down on the air strip just outside of town.

Nora, who had distained further sleep with the enthusiasm of one waiting for a present, stood inside the small airport's large windows, nose pressed to the glass as the airplane turned off the runway and made its way towards the building.

Sarah and Lucas sat side by side, holding hands, not saying much. Peggy had been saddled with Dylan's stuffed otter, the requested Mr. Ruffles. With Agent Flynn and one of the police sergeants who'd been on the case hovering by the still-closed canteen, they made for an interesting party.

Finally, the plane slowed to a stop, and the propellers whirled down. After a few minutes' delay, the small plane's hatch opened and the stairs descended.

Nora was off like a shot, darting through the doors with the lightning-quick determination of the young. Sarah and Lucas ran after her, but Nora was halfway to the plane by the time Lucas caught up with her, catching her around the middle and lifting her off the ground, her little feet still moving.

Peggy, who had followed Sarah and Lucas at a slower pace, watched as Tony Stark descended the airplane's steps with languid ease. It had been several years since Peggy had last seen Tony, and they hadn't properly spoken since Howard and Maria's funeral.

Tony was thirty years old now, Peggy thought, older than Howard had been when Peggy first met the man. That had been a different time and place, in the middle of a world war. Peggy shook off the reminiscences. Falling into the past would do no one any good.

Behind Tony came a tall, slender woman. She moved down the stairs slowly, and it took Peggy a moment to see, in the dark of the airfield, that she was guiding a small figure by the hand.

At the sight of her grandson, alive and moving down the steps under his own power, Peggy's knees very nearly gave way. It hadn't been a mistake or a dream; Dylan really was alive and well.

Nora's high-pitched squeal echoed across the airfield. Dylan broke away from the woman on the stairs and ran the last few feet to his family, where Sarah and Lucas caught the boy up in a double embrace. Nora was bouncing and crying and after a moment, Lucas picked the girl up into a the family hug.

Tony stood back, hands in his pockets, staring. Peggy circled the family to Tony's side, Mr. Ruffles tucked under her arm. "Thank you for bringing Dylan home," she said.

Tony looked at Peggy with a frown. "Do you have a painting aging in your attic?" he asked. On his other side, the woman who had helped Dylan off the plane looked at Tony, askance.

"As always, a pleasure to see you," Peggy said. "Are you always this awake at six in the morning?"

"Only when I have small children cluttering up my doorstep," Tony shot back.

Behind them, three more people were disembarking the plane. Two had the look of FBI agents, while the third walked with the determined set of shoulders Peggy had always associated with SHIELD agents fresh from the Academy.

In the meantime, Dylan broke away from his parents' hug and pulled Nora by the hand over to where Peggy and Tony stood. The boy wore the same clothes he had in the video from the school, and his feet were bare. Peggy knelt down so she was on eye-level with the boy. Here, in the faint light from the air field, Peggy could see the bruising on Dylan's face and neck, not too swollen, but dark against his fair skin.

"Hi, Mama Peggy," Dylan said shyly, smiling at her. As he spoke, the boy flicked his gaze at Tony and the woman standing beside him, and he stood straighter.

Mindful of the child's dignity, Peggy did not immediately pull him into an embrace, nor did she hand him the requested stuffed animal. "From the sounds of things, you've had quite an eventful day," she said.

The boy nodded. "The pilot let me go into the cockpit while he flew us home," Dylan said.

"That's certainly a treat." Peggy held out her right hand, and Dylan let himself be drawn into a one-armed embrace. Nora squished in along Peggy's other side for a hug. "I'm glad you're home," Peggy whispered into Dylan's ear.

"Me too." Dylan's arms tightened around Peggy's neck.

"Me too!" Nora said loudly, pulling Mr. Ruffles from Peggy's grasp. "Can we have pancakes?"

"In a little while," Peggy said, releasing the children. "You must learn patience."

Nora made a face as she squished the stuffed toy to her chest.

Dylan took Nora's hand and pulled her over to Tony and the woman. "This is Pepper," the boy said to Nora. "She's nice."

Taking in the smile on the boy's face as he beamed up at the young woman, coupled with his refusal to take the stuffed animal he'd asked for, Peggy wondered if Dylan might have developed a bit of a crush on the woman in the brief time he had known her.

Sarah and Lucas joined their children, Sarah scooping Nora up into her arms. "Dylan said you were nice enough to make him some hot chocolate," Sarah said to Pepper, pulling Dylan against her hip.

"It was the least I could do; he is a very nice young man," Pepper said with a smile down at Dylan, who hid his face against his mother's side.

Tony shook his head, seeming to lose interest in things. "Pepper Potts, Sarah Carter, et cetera, et cetera." He looked at his watch. "Okay, so, kid delivered, we need to literally jet."

Sarah ignored Tony. "Have you worked with Tony for long?" she asked Pepper.

"I've been his PA for three months," Pepper told her.

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "Two months and twenty-nine days longer than anyone else would last."

"Are you implying that I'm difficult to work for?" Tony demanded, waggling his eyebrows at Nora. The little girl giggled and hid her face behind the stuffed otter.

"Who was implying anything?" Sarah shifted Nora around and leaned in to hug Tony. The man seemed startled at the physical contact, but he managed to return the hug, patting Sarah on the back awkwardly. "Thanks for bringing Dylan back."

Stepping back, Tony shook himself, like a ruffled hen settling its feathers. "The plane was already gassed up and ready to go."

Peggy, who had been watching this exchange slightly removed, stepped forward. "All right, everyone, say goodbye to Pepper. Mr. Stark, a word?"

Eyeing her warily, Tony let himself be led a few feet away from the group. "Can you never call me Mr. Stark again?" he asked when they had some privacy.

"If that's what you want, Tony."

He scrubbed his hand over his face. "Okay, no, seriously, how the hell have you not aged at all?" he demanded. "I used to just think it was some weird adult thing, you looking so young, but isn't any plastic surgery, this is weird."

"Tony."

"Is it drugs?" Tony went on. "Because if we can bottle this up and sell it we'll make a fortune—" His mouth snapped shut as Peggy took a step towards him.

"I'm not going to ask what business you're about these days," she said, keeping her voice low as she stared up at Tony. "Nor will I ask what you're doing with Howard's company. But you need to be careful as to what you're about."

Tony stopped fidgeting. "You think someone grabbed the kid to put pressure on _me_?"

"Can you think of another reason he ended up in Los Angeles?"

"That's stupid, I never even met the kid."

Peggy looked at Howard's son, Maria's son, and wondered what they would have made of the young man he had become. "Take care as to what roads you walk down, Tony."

"I'm always careful," Tony shot back, as he turned and sauntered back over to Pepper. "Okay, hop to, leaving now."

"Tony," Sarah said, drawing Tony's attention. "Thank you."

Tony tapped a restless pattern against his pant leg. "You sure you want to be thanking me?"

"For bringing Dylan back, yes."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Howard Stark's son and daughter, then Tony shook his head. "Leaving now." He turned his back on the group and ran nimbly up the airplane's steps.

"It's good to meet you," Pepper Potts was saying, shaking Lucas's hand, then Sarah's. She stopped in front of Dylan and regarded him. "Would you care to shake hands?" she asked.

Shyly, Dylan offered his hand, and Pepper shook it gently. The boy's sleeve rode up his arm, and in the dim light, Peggy could see angry bruises on his wrist.

Everyone on the tarmac walked to the air field terminal as the private jet powered up, propellers whirling as the plane wheeled back, then started toward the run way. Once inside terminal, Dylan planted himself in front of the glass and watched the plane take off, waving at the departing jet the entire time.

"Now," Lucas said, lifting Dylan up like he weighted nothing at all, "We're going to go to the hospital and get you checked out."

"I'm fine, daddy," Dylan said, letting his head rest on his father's shoulder.

"Then this should go pretty fast." Lucas held out his hand for Sarah, who already had Nora on her hip. "Then how about we have some pancakes?"

"I like pancakes," Dylan said, even as his voice slurred gently with sleep.

Peggy declined to go with the group, saying she would meet them later. The FBI agents and the police escorted the family to the waiting cars, leaving Peggy and the young SHIELD agent alone in the air terminal.

Peggy walked to a row of uncomfortable plastic seating by the far wall, with a clear line of sight to all exits, and sank down. Lord, she was exhausted. Seeing Dylan had removed most of the adrenaline edge she'd been running on all day, and now she just ached.

It took her a moment to realize the young agent was still standing, watching Peggy.

"For God's sake, sit down," Peggy said, crossing her legs. The young woman sat. "Now, what's your name?"

"Hill, ma'am. Agent Maria Hill."

"Well, Agent Hill, what do you have to report?"

The woman sat, back straight. "I attended Mr. Stark's residence with the FBI agents, as requested," she began. "Upon seeing the child, I visually ascertained that his injuries appeared to be superficial."

"And how did you determine that?" Peggy asked archly.

Agent Hill looked at Peggy with clear dark eyes. "That would be the enthusiasm with which he was eating ice cream and running around Mr. Stark's living room."

"Go on."

"One of the FBI agents asked Mr. Alvarez how he arrived at Mr. Stark's residence. The child appeared hesitant to answer the question at first, but he eventually explained, rather vaguely, that he had escaped from the place he was being held and found a man driving a delivery van, and that man drove him to Mr. Stark's house."

"Did he explain further?"

"No, and his reactions, I would have said that he was making part of the story up."

For the first time, Peggy took a closer took at this woman. Young, yes, and quick. "You base that on…"

"For starters, two in the morning is an odd time for deliveries, and any honest man would have called the police."

"And a dishonest one?"

"Wouldn't have driven the kid to Malibu," Hill replied immediately. "He could have dropped Dylan off at any number of places along the way."

Peggy slid down in her seat. "Why don't you get to the point, Agent Hill? Whatever big reveal you have in store for me."

For the first time, Agent Hill appeared uneasy. "The FBI agents were able to get Dylan to describe the place he had been held, and in connection with existing flight data, were able to pinpoint the location as a hangar at a private airfield in Palamade. That's about seventy miles from Malibu."

"And?"

"And the FBI stormed the hangar just before we boarded Mr. Stark's place," Hill said. "Ma'am, everyone there had been butchered."

The word sent ice through Peggy's limbs. "How many?" she asked when she had control of her voice again.

"Six." Hill swallowed. "The FBI will be running fingerprint analysis to determine their identities, but on comparison with the surveillance footage from the school, the man who took Dylan was identified as one of the bodies."

Peggy pressed her fingers to her lips. None of this made any _sense_. If one of the kidnappers had turned on the rest, how could he have killed six people withouth taking fire himself? And then who had taken Dylan to safety?

"Do you know if Dylan saw any of this?" she asked.

Hill glanced down at her hands. "I was told that the floor of the hangar was pretty much covered in blood," she said. "When we got to Mr. Stark's place, Miss Potts was in the process of washing blood off Dylan's feet, only it didn't look like any of it was his."

Peggy let out a slow breath. She had seen barbarity in her time, bodies ripped apart by gunfire or mortar shelling. Unbidden, her mind recalled with vivid clarity of that room in Berlin, of seeing her informant ripped apart, blood spattered on every surface. The Winter Soldier had been only a few feet from her then, motionless and silent in the dark of the closet while Peggy, oblivious, had looked for clues in the slaughter.

"Is there anything else?" Peggy asked, swallowing hard against the bile in her throat.

"No ma'am," Hill said. "Not at this time, although SHIELD is working with the FBI to determine who was responsible for Dylan's kidnapping."

"Let me know what you find out," Peggy said, and stood. Hill also stood. "Thank you for accompanying Dylan home."

Instead of making some self-deprecating comment or deflecting the comment, Maria Hill just smiled. Peggy could appreciate that. "I'll have all reports delivered to you directly, ma'am."

And with that, Peggy took herself out into the chill October morning, to join her family.

* * *

The day passed in fits and starts. Dylan's hospital check-up was as good as could be expected – the bruises on his face and neck spoke of rough handling, the marks on his wrists from where he had been restrained. But there were no broken bones, no concussion, and no signs that the boy had been molested.

Dylan was quiet, but then he was always quiet, especially with Nora around to fill the silence. After the hospital, Lucas drove everyone home, where Peggy made pancakes while Dylan showered and changed into clean clothing. Nora passed out at the table while Dylan picked at his food, and Sarah and Lucas tried to keep up cheerful conversation.

Eventually, Dylan fell asleep on the living room couch, while the FBI dismantled their equipment and cleared out. Sarah and Lucas also dozed, while Peggy was left to clean up and handle Nora when the girl woke suddenly, wondering where all the pancakes had gone.

Then lunch and television as the afternoon dragged on, and still Dylan would not talk about his abduction.

By evening, Peggy could see that Sarah was nearing the end of her patience. Lucas suggested an early bedtime for everyone, but Nora refused, saying loudly that she wasn't tired, not even a little, and only wanted to watch movies. Instead of arguing with her, Lucas put down pillows and blankets on the living room floor and set Nora up in the middle of it all, then put on a video and settled down to watch with her.

Nora was asleep before the opening credits ended.

Sarah came downstairs alone, slumping into a dining room chair beside Peggy. "Aren't you tired?" she asked, yawning.

"Very." Peggy took a swallow of tepid coffee from her cup. "Where's Dylan?"

"I told him that we were going to watch movies, but he wanted to get into his pajamas himself," Sarah said. She folded her hands on the tabletop. "I just keep thinking that this is all a dream and I'm going to wake up and he'll still be gone."

"He's here, and he's safe," Peggy reminded her. "Same with Nora, and with Lucas."

"Yeah." Sarah lapsed into silence.

Upstairs, they could hear Dylan moving around in his bedroom. After a while, as the movie played softly on the television, the overhead footsteps moved, and Dylan came down the stairs slowly.

He had changed into his pajamas, and over them wore his father's faded bathrobe with the cuffs rolled up, the hem trailing along behind him. On his feet he wore his mother's fuzzy blue slippers.

"Hello," Peggy said, as the boy went straight to his mother and crawled into her lap. "Do you want to watch a movie with your father?"

Dylan shook his head. He was not a small child, but he managed to curl up into a ball on Sarah's lap, angled so he could look at Peggy.

"Nora's already sleeping," Peggy went on, pushing her coffee cup away from her. "Although she'll likely be up again in a few hours." She watched Dylan carefully, at the slight frown on his face, how he rubbed at his bruised wrist. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

After almost a minute of silence, Dylan nodded.

"Do you want me to guess what it is?" Peggy pressed. Sarah wrapped her arms tighter around Dylan, kissing the top of his head gently.

"I have a thing to tell you," Dylan said, playing absently with a loose thread on the bathrobe.

"And what is that?"

Dylan blinked at Peggy. "It's a message, from the man who come to get me."

A message. Peggy's mind flashed back to the note in Berlin, in Milan, and finally in Paris, moments before the Winter Soldier had put three bullets through her heart. "Yes?"

Dylan wrinkled his nose in concentration. "He said, I had to say, _the bargain stands_. And I had to call you Margaret."

 _The bargain stands_. Words from the Winter Soldier's note, years before, stood out in Peggy's mind. _If you leave me alone, no harm will come to your daughter or her child._

All the pieces fell into place then; the message, the massacre in the hangar, Dylan being abandoned on the road outside Tony's mansion.

The Winter Soldier had rescued her grandson.

Trying to keep her reaction from being seen, Peggy asked, "Did you see this man's face?"

Dylan nodded. "He had a mask, but then he took it off."

A black mask covering the man's face as he choked the air out of her on that platform in Paris. "Did he have dark glasses on?" Peggy asked. Her right hand lay clenched on her lap, nails digging into her palm.

"Uh huh," Dylan agreed. "But then he took those off too."

Dylan had seen the Winter Soldier's face, unmasked, just as he had when he was a toddler in his bed.

Peggy leaned forward. "Dylan, was the man who took you to Uncle Tony's, was he one of the men who took you from the playground?"

Dylan shook his head emphatically. "No."

"Do you remember seeing him before?"

Dylan considered this. "Maybe," he said after a while. "When I was just a kid."

Sarah put her hand on Dylan's forehead, rocking him gently.

"Dylan, can you tell me what happened after those bad men took you out of the airplane?" Peggy asked. She couldn't stop now, she had to know.

Dylan blinked at her for a long moment. "They put me in a room, and they tied my hands up," he said softly. "I said I was hungry and one of them hit me." He rubbed at one of the bruises on his jaw. "They left me alone _forever_ but then they came back and they untied me so I could pee and they gave me a bag of chips."

"Did they leave your hands untied then?" Peggy asked, working as hard as she could to keep her voice unaffected.

"No," Dylan said with a scowl. "I ate the chips and they tied me up again. And they took my shoes!"

Trying to prevent escape, Peggy thought. "The room you were in, did it have a window?"

"No," Dylan said. "It had a whole bunch of tools, but I couldn't reach them. I tried."

"That must have been scary."

"Not really," Dylan said, cuddling close against his mother. "I wasn't scared."

"Were you there for a long time?"

"I think so. I fell asleep." He rubbed at his wrist again. "I woke up when there were noises."

"What sort of noises did you hear?" Peggy pressed.

"I think it was a gun," Dylan said slowly. "It was really loud. And then it stopped, and the door opened and the man with the mask on was there."

The Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier, so close to her grandson. "What did he do?"

"He cut the rope off and said to come with him and not make any sound." Dylan gripped a handful of Sarah's shirt. "So I didn't make any sound."

"Did you see anything?"

"There were men, and they were lying on the ground." Dylan worried at the fabric of Sarah's shirt. "They weren't moving."

Not wanting the boy to dwell on the imagery, Peggy moved on. "Where did the man take you?"

"Outside," Dylan said. "It was dark. And there was a van and I didn't want to get in but the man said if I got in, he would take me to someone to take me home."

"Did you get in the van?"

Dylan nodded. "He made me sit in the back for a while but then I sat in front."

"Was the man the only person in the van?"

"Yes."

The Winter Soldier had been working alone.

"Did you talk to him?" Sarah asked, breaking into the interrogation.

Dylan nodded again. "I asked him if he was a bad guy and he said no. So I asked him how he found me if he wasn't a bad guy and he said Nora told him so."

Nora, talking to someone in a blue state trooper hat in the den, and no state trooper vehicles outside. Peggy breathed through the sudden stab of ice down her spine, that the Winter Soldier had been in their house, had spoken to little Nora, and Peggy had only seen his back. "Nora was very worried about you," Peggy said. "She was ever so worried that the bad men would hurt you."

Dylan sniffled. "They said they'd hurt Nora if I tried to run away."

"Well, Nora is just fine," Peggy said, reaching over to tuck the bathrobe around Dylan's knees. "And you were very brave."

Dylan eyed Peggy. "I didn't _feel_ brave," he admitted after a minute. "I was scared. Just a little."

"That happens a lot," Peggy told him.

"Even when you're grown up?"

"Especially when you're grown up."

Dylan went back to frowning at his hands. "Was the man with the mask, is he a bad guy?"

Peggy slumped back in her chair. "Yes," she said after a long moment. "He is a very bad guy."

"Then why did he come save me?"

Over Dylan's head, Sarah was staring at Peggy, her gaze unwavering.

Peggy took a breath. "Some times," she said carefully, "Bad guys do good things. Just like good guys can do bad things."

"Why?"

"Because people are confusing." Peggy stood, putting a hand on Dylan's shoulder. "What's important is that you are home safe, and everything is going to be all right."

She escaped into the chill night air, breathing out all the panic and anger to which she could not give voice. Dylan was safe, and for his return, Peggy had to thank the man who had tried to kill her, had threatened her family, had sent a one-armed patsy to seduce and drug her.

The Winter Soldier had saved Dylan's life, and in doing so had tightened the shackles on Peggy's promise to leave him alone, in return for her family's lives.

Not for the first time, Peggy wondered what would come of her deal with the devil.

After a few minutes, the door opened, and Sarah came out onto the porch. She stood beside Peggy, staring out at the night.

"Is Dylan asleep?" Peggy asked.

"No, he's watching movies with Luke," Sarah said. "Hopefully he'll get some sleep soon, but…" She let out a frustrated sigh. "I don't know."

Peggy looked out at the night sky, the dark cloud-cover lit from below by the lights down at the shipyards.

"Can I just clear something up here?" Sarah asked after a while.

"Go ahead."

"Some group of psychos grabs my son from the playground, probably to try to blackmail my brother who has never met Dylan, and then some other psycho rescues him back?"

"The men who took Dylan were likely well paid to do so," Peggy said, leaning against the porch's supporting beam. "They were not psychopaths."

Sarah ground her teeth. "And the guy in the mask who shot a whole bunch of people, what about him?"

"I've never been sure what to make of him," Peggy admitted.

"So what the hell is going on?" Sarah demanded. "What is he to you?"

Peggy took a step towards her daughter, holding up her crippled left hand. "He did this to me," Peggy said vehemently. "He shot me three times in the chest and left me to die in Paris."

Sarah stared at Peggy, horrified. "And he went after Dylan?"

Peggy shook her head. "No," she said, taking hold of Sarah's arm. "The deal was, if I stopped chasing him, if I left him alone, then you and Dylan would be safe."

Sarah pressed her hands over her mouth. "But he tried to kill you!"

"And it didn't work." Peggy cupped Sarah's cheek with her right hand. "Sarah, listen to me. Dylan is home safe, and you need to leave this alone."

"But mama—"

" _Sarah_."

After a moment, Sarah nodded, her eyes still wide with horror.

"You can't tell Lucas," Peggy said, letting go of Sarah. "And if Dylan comes to you, deflect it. This needs to be quiet."

"But what's he going to do?" Sarah whispered. "If he knows you can't go after him, what's he going to do?"

"Don't think about that," Peggy told Sarah. "You need to concentrate on the children, and on staying healthy for the next one, do you understand?"

Nodding, Sarah reached out. Peggy let her daughter hug her, trying to focus on the immediacy of the embrace, not the dangers circling in the air.

The Winter Soldier had Peggy right where he wanted her – crippled, useless, unable to act. In rescuing Dylan, he had only reinforced his dominance over her.

Peggy's chest burned with rage. She promised herself that she would find a way out of this bind. She would find a way to keep her family safe and out of the Winter Soldier's reach.

And then she was going after him, the same way he had gone after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fancasting: Ann Hathaway as Sarah Carter.


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

_Fall, 2002_

The skies overhead were clear and blue; the lake surface rippling in the faint breeze. The grass of the meadow ran along the edge of the lake as far as the eye could see; the only interruption in the flat surface was a stand of trees reaching down from the distant rocky hillside, casting shadows on the far end of the lake.

Peggy sat on a blanket on the grass, a picnic basket at her side. The silence under the empty skies was almost a physical weight, time passing as the sun drifted slowly overhead.

A bird soared through the sky as Peggy reached into the picnic basket to retrieve the thermos of tea, poured some into the little cup, and sipped as the raptor circled up into the blue.

In the distance, the faint hum of a motor. Peggy kept her eyes on the bird as the hum grew nearer. A black spot appeared over the horizon, the sun glinting off the window as the van turned down the embankment at speed.

Finally, the van drove right up to Peggy and braked to a halt. The van's back doors flew open and a black-hooded figure with hands cuffed behind its back was manhandled out of the van by two burly SHIELD agents. The agents gave the figure a shove and the person went sprawling; the agents went back in the van without a word. The doors slammed shut and the van drove off, all before the black-hooded figure could struggle to its knees.

Finally, Peggy spoke. "You can take the hood off."

The figure froze.

"And you can take off those handcuffs while you're at it."

Slowly, the figure moved. Standing carefully, bending the arms down and stepping one leg, then the other, through the ring of the handcuffs. Reaching up, the hood was untied and removed, to reveal the pale, exhausted face of Natasha Romanova.

She stared at Peggy for minute. "They said you had retired."

"We need to talk," Peggy said, reclining on the blanket. "Where there's no one to hear."

"There's always someone to hear," Natasha said. She dropped the hood to the ground. "Your hospitality leaves a lot to be desired."

"Yes."

Natasha stared at Peggy, her eyes open wide and blank, but Peggy fancied that Natasha had been surprised by the admission.

"Those agents," Peggy said, picking up the thermos of tea. "Their orders were to deliver you here."

"In what state, up to them?" Natasha went on dryly. Her American accent was pure New England, pitch perfect in her husky tones.

"Unharmed," Peggy said. She poured tea into the thermos cup and held it out to Natasha. "I suppose they will tell their team lead that it was necessary for the security of the personnel in the vehicle to treat you as they did."

Natasha arched an eyebrow, the motion pulling at the developing bruising in the corner of her eye. "If that is the case, then they are fools." She twisted her wrist and the handcuffs, the latest line in irremovable security devices, fell to the ground on top of the hood.

"I agree." Peggy waited. "Sit down, Natasha. We have some things to discuss."

Warily, yet with the grace Peggy remembered from long ago, Natasha stepped around to the other side of the blanket and sank down. "Here?"

"Yes, here." Peggy handed Natasha the cup, which the other woman took but did not drink from. "No one listening, no one watching. I suppose you've had quite enough of that for the last month."

"If I had know that being brought into SHIELD would be so infuriating, I might have ducked out on Barton." Natasha turned the cup slowly, then placed her lips directly over where Peggy had earlier sipped.

The way Peggy had heard the story, SHIELD agent Clint Barton had run Natasha to ground at the end of a very long operation across several European countries. Instead of putting a bullet through her head as he had been _ordered_ , Barton had given Natasha the option of turning herself in to work for SHIELD.

Natasha had dropped her guns and gone with Barton. Eventually.

Nick Fury himself had undertaken Natasha's interrogation. From what he had said to Peggy afterwards, it had taken him two weeks to even start to believe that this wasn't a ploy.

But, by the fact that Nick had called Peggy for what amounted to a goddamn _character reference_ for the Black Widow, believe her he had.

Peggy, however, was not convinced.

"Are you hungry?" Peggy asked, letting none of her inner thoughts show on her face. She reached into the picnic basket and brought out sandwiches, potato salad, a small jar of pickles. "I know how exhausting dealing with SHIELD agents can be."

Natasha did not move. "Is this to be my last meal?" she demanded.

Peggy unwrapped a sandwich. "I have far better things to do with my time than to come out of retirement to execute you." She took a bite. Chicken salad and apple, how lovely. "Director Fury needs one last assessment before he decides what to do with you."

"And what do you plan on telling him?"

Peggy chewed her mouthful and swallowed before responding. "That you're far more dangerous if you're not working with SHIELD," she said.

"There are those who think I am determined to destroy SHIELD from within."

Peggy wrinkled her nose at the idea. "Well that would be a rather stupid plan, wouldn't it?" She took another bite of her sandwich. "Anyone else in the world would be better at that role."

Natasha watched Peggy quietly for a few moments, then carefully reached for a sandwich of her own. She ate slowly at first, probably tasting to see if the food was poisoned, but soon she was wolfing down her third sandwich. Peggy, who had not been living on prison rations for a month, handed Natasha a fork for the potato salad and settled back with her tea.

It took Natasha about ten minutes to finish all the food Peggy had laid out, including all the pickles. Peggy handed her a bottle of water and watched as the woman drank half of it down. Even under the bruising, Natasha still looked as young as she had in that hotel room in Hawaii, the week after Howard and Maria died. Not for the first time, Peggy wondered what had been done to Natasha to keep her so ageless.

Perhaps she had been born that way. Or maybe, as with Peggy, the fates had intervened with science and with pain.

Natasha wiped her mouth on her sleeve and asked, "When are you going to tell me why we're out here?"

"I'm rather enjoying the day," Peggy said.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at her. "Why did you bring me out to the middle of nowhere?"

If that was how Natasha wanted it. Peggy put her teacup down, then reached into the bottom of the picnic basket and pulled out a revolver, its barrel gleaming sharply under the bright empty sky.

Natasha went very still.

Peggy set the revolver down on the blanket in front of Natasha. "Nick Fury can decide what he wants to do with you, I don't care," Peggy said, leaning back. "But we come from a different time. We understand things differently."

"What is this?" Natasha asked, voice and expression perfectly blank.

"I may no longer be with SHIELD, officially, but I am somewhat invested in its continuation," Peggy said. A light breeze was picking up, blowing a strand of red hair across Natasha's cheek. "You have three options. The first is, you give me your word that your desire to join SHIELD is genuine, and that you will do what you can to protect its agents."

Natasha didn't so much as blink. "Or?"

"If you can't commit to that, then you can do one of two things," Peggy said. "You can pick up that gun and try to make a break for it, even though they will kill you when they catch you again. Or if you're tired of running, you put that gun in your mouth and end this right now."

There was a long silence. Then Natasha picked up the revolver. "What if I use this to shoot you instead?" she asked. The barrel of the gun was still pointed at the ground.

"A viable fourth option," Peggy agreed, "But it never seems to work. This isn't an attempt to get you to do my dirty work for me, darling. It's the last time you're going to have this choice."

"What if I join SHIELD and something goes wrong?" It was obvious what Natasha meant by _wrong_.

Peggy shrugged. "Accidents happen, agents die," she said. "But there's a difference between losing an agent in the line of duty, and you joining SHIELD to pick off my people from the inside. If you do that, if this is all a game to kill my agents, I will find you and I will stop you."

"And then you will kill me."

"Oh no," Peggy said, pressing her damaged hand flat on the soft blanket. "I will put you in a box and I will make sure that you never die. Do you understand?"

The blood slowly drained from Natasha's face, but she didn't look away from Peggy. To be imprisoned, with not even the promise of old age to rescue one from captivity... It was possible that Natasha was the only other person in the world who would understand the true horror of such a punishment. "Is this to be my fate if any agent dies?" Natasha demanded, her finger curling around the gun's trigger guard. "If I could stop it or not?"

"Only if you betray SHIELD from the inside, otherwise no," Peggy retorted. "I know about losing agents on an operation, I know what it's like. Sometimes there is nothing to be done."

"So if I intend to betray SHIELD, you tell me to kill myself now while I have the chance," Natasha finished bitterly.

Deliberately, she lifted the revolver and snapped open the chamber, tipping the bullets onto the blanket.

Peggy took a deep breath and relaxed her hands. "Good," she said with false lightness. "I was hoping you'd see it my way. I wasn't looking forward to getting blood out of this blanket."

Natasha put the revolver back down. Her hand was stiff, the kind of reaction one had when keeping oneself from shaking apart. "Perhaps it's best that you've retired from field work," she said, moving back from the weapon.

"No doubt about it," Peggy agreed. She looked toward the clump of trees at the end of the lake, and waved her hand three times. "Come along, time to pack up."

Natasha drew back, going up on her heels. "What was that?"

"Our ride." Peggy began to pack things back into the basket, taking a moment to pocket the bullets. "Agent Barton will be here shortly."

Natasha stood and backed away from Peggy. "Why is Agent Barton hiding in the trees?" she demanded.

"As you said, you could have taken that revolver and shot me," Peggy said, standing to roll up the blanket. "In which case it would be fairly obvious where your loyalties lay. In that case, Agent Barton would have the opportunity to fix his mistake."

The blanket rolled and basket closed, Peggy dusted off her hands. Natasha was still staring at Peggy. "You put him there to kill me."

"I put him there to stop you from destroying SHIELD," Peggy corrected. "Since you have no intentions of doing so, Agent Barton isn't going to have to put an arrow through your liver."

Natasha turned away, looking out at the lake. "A few years ago, there was a rumour going around that the reason you left the job behind was that you'd gone mad," she said. "I'm starting to think that they weren't wrong."

"This isn't madness," Peggy said. "It's practicality. We're old women, you and I. You know that sometimes we have to do what the men cannot."

In the distance, the faint hum of a motor came, and over the hills a small black jeep drove in their direction.

"Was this all you wanted?" Natasha asked. "To bring me out here and threaten me?"

"No. I also wanted to have lunch." Peggy dropped the blanket on top of the picnic basket. "But I do have one question."

"What?"

"The Winter Soldier," Peggy said. Natasha turned around. "You know him?"

Natasha ran her tongue over her lower lip. "He's a ghost story," she said. "That's all."

"Your ghost story kills too many people for my liking." Peggy held up her damaged hand. "A souvenir from Paris."

Natasha frowned, the first real expression Peggy had seen on her that day. "The Winter Soldier doesn't leave souvenirs," she said. "He also doesn't leave survivors."

"And yet." The vehicle was getting closer, and Peggy could just make out SHIELD Agent Clint Barton in the driver's seat. "Do you know who he works with? Any known associates?"

"The Winter Soldier works alone."

Knowing she may never get this chance again, with Natasha still somewhat off-balance from their encounter, Peggy pressed on. "Not even one-armed men with lovely smiles?"

The jeep was slowing now, pulling up beside them, as Natasha shook her head, her eyes wide at some internal misgiving. "That's not an associate," she said as the jeep pulled to a stop. "The Winter Soldier, he only has one arm. Department X gave him a metal arm in replacement."

The world narrowed on Peggy as Natasha's words sunk in. He had been a tall man, brown hair and blue eyes; a strong cleft chin with a hint of five o'clock shadow, holding a glass of beer in his right hand as he approached Peggy in a small pub in Aberdeen. If Natasha was right, it hadn't been an associate of the Winter Soldier who had taken her to bed, drugged her and left her with a message in her pocket all those years ago.

That had been the Winter Soldier himself.

"What did he do to you?" Natasha asked, and her voice seemed very far away. The immediacy of Natasha and Agent Barton pulled Peggy back to herself, forced her to shove the wave of hysteria down to deal with later.

"We'd best be getting back," Peggy said, stepping around Natasha to pick up the picnic basket. The ground was curiously soft under her feet as Clint Barton stepped out of the jeep and stared at Natasha. "What happened to you?" he asked.

"You weren't watching?" Natasha asked archly.

"Agent Carter didn't go after you with a tire iron," Barton shot back, moving to take the basket from Peggy. "Would you know them again?"

"They had me in a hood," Natasha said as Peggy leaned against the jeep, willing the world to steady itself. The revelation about the Winter Soldier did nothing to change the events of years before.

And Peggy still had work to do.

"Yeah, but you don't need your eyes," Barton was saying as he tapped his hearing aid. "Let me know if you remember who it was."

"I don't need you to interfere on my behalf," Natasha said stiffly.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Peggy interrupted, opening the jeep's back door to slide into the back seat. "I just spent an hour making sure you wouldn't be going after SHIELD agents. Can you two have this conversation back at HQ? Out of my earshot?"

Barton shrugged. "Anything you'd like, ma'am," he said, with just a hint of sarcasm. Peggy rolled her eyes as he and Natasha got into the jeep, and off they went.

The Winter Soldier had only one arm, Peggy thought as the vehicle rolled over the green fields of the land preserve an hour from DC. All those years since the Winter Soldier tried to kill her in Paris, sine he'd held her to the ground and choked her before putting three bullets in her chest. Then in Aberdeen, she'd gone with him willingly, put herself beneath him and let him fuck her, drug her, and finally let her go.

Why hadn't he killed her?

She'd seen his face, and so had Dylan and Nora, and Peggy did not understand how the Winter Soldier had let them live.

He should have killed her.

It had been seven years since that night in the motel. The Winter Soldier should have killed her, but instead he made a bargain for the safety of Peggy's family, in return for his own safety.

But _why_?

Forcing herself to take a deep breath, Peggy watched the passing grassland. Once she could figure out a way to keep Sarah and the children safe, she was going after the Winter Soldier, even if she didn't know what she as going to do with him.

Only now, she knew who she was hunting.

_to be continued_


End file.
